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Sandrine Bailleux authored
At the moment, all BL images share a similar memory layout: they start with their code section, followed by their read-only data section. The two sections are contiguous in memory. Therefore, the end of the code section and the beginning of the read-only data one might share a memory page. This forces both to be mapped with the same memory attributes. As the code needs to be executable, this means that the read-only data stored on the same memory page as the code are executable as well. This could potentially be exploited as part of a security attack. This patch introduces a new build flag called SEPARATE_CODE_AND_RODATA, which isolates the code and read-only data on separate memory pages. This in turn allows independent control of the access permissions for the code and read-only data. This has an impact on memory footprint, as padding bytes need to be introduced between the code and read-only data to ensure the segragation of the two. To limit the memory cost, the memory layout of the read-only section has been changed in this case. - When SEPARATE_CODE_AND_RODATA=0, the layout is unchanged, i.e. the read-only section still looks like this (padding omitted): | ... | +-------------------+ | Exception vectors | +-------------------+ | Read-only data | +-------------------+ | Code | +-------------------+ BLx_BASE In this case, the linker script provides the limits of the whole read-only section. - When SEPARATE_CODE_AND_RODATA=1, the exception vectors and read-only data are swapped, such that the code and exception vectors are contiguous, followed by the read-only data. This gives the following new layout (padding omitted): | ... | +-------------------+ | Read-only data | +-------------------+ | Exception vectors | +-------------------+ | Code | +-------------------+ BLx_BASE In this case, the linker script now exports 2 sets of addresses instead: the limits of the code and the limits of the read-only data. Refer to the Firmware Design guide for more details. This provides platform code with a finer-grained view of the image layout and allows it to map these 2 regions with the appropriate access permissions. Note that SEPARATE_CODE_AND_RODATA applies to all BL images. Change-Id: I936cf80164f6b66b6ad52b8edacadc532c935a49
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