Since Linux v3.2, vsyscalls have been deprecated and slow. From v3.2
on, Linux had three vsyscall modes: "native", "emulate", and "none".
"emulate" is the default. All known user programs work correctly in
emulate mode, but vsyscalls turn into page faults and are emulated.
This is very slow. In "native" mode, the vsyscall page is easily
usable as an exploit gadget, but vsyscalls are a bit faster -- they
turn into normal syscalls. (This is in contrast to vDSO functions,
which can be much faster than syscalls.) In "none" mode, there are
no vsyscalls.
For all practical purposes, "native" was really just a chicken bit
in case something went wrong with the emulation. It's been over six
years, and nothing has gone wrong. Delete it.
Signed-off-by: Andy Lutomirski <luto@kernel.org>
Acked-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
Acked-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>
Cc: Dominik Brodowski <linux@dominikbrodowski.net>
Cc: Kernel Hardening <kernel-hardening@lists.openwall.com>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/519fee5268faea09ae550776ce969fa6e88668b0.1520449896.git.luto@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
076ca272a1