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Daniel Borkmann authored
Back then, commit 96ae5227 ("bpf: Add bpf_probe_write_user BPF helper to be called in tracers") added the bpf_probe_write_user() helper in order to allow to override user space memory. Its original goal was to have a facility to "debug, divert, and manipulate execution of semi-cooperative processes" under CAP_SYS_ADMIN. Write to kernel was explicitly disallowed since it would otherwise tamper with its integrity. One use case was shown in cf9b1199 ("samples/bpf: Add test/example of using bpf_probe_write_user bpf helper") where the program DNATs traffic at the time of connect(2) syscall, meaning, it rewrites the arguments to a syscall while they're still in userspace, and before the syscall has a chance to copy the argument into kernel space. These days we have better mechanisms in BPF for achieving the same (e.g. for load-balancers), but without having to write to userspace memory. Of course the bpf_probe_write_user() helper can also be used to ...
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