CFIXX targets vtable pointer integrity for C++. HexType is a sanitizer for C++ type safety. Why should we cite your work there? You describe protecting returns through a set check and read-only code function pointers. We cited some CFI work but not everything.

for the same reason you cited the Abadi paper? pax-future.txt has all the basic ideas that i later implemented in RAP and predated the CFI paper by 2+ years..

Let me reiterate: in the pax-future paper you propose protecting returns. For the forward edge you only propose to write-protect as many function pointers as possible. While reducing attack surface, that's not CFI 🙃 (Also, idea != design, implementation, evaluation, discussion)

Did RAP reference KCoFI? Happens both ways. Terrible thing is that RAP then caused other academics to assume it was the only kernel control flow integrity system.

anyway, your CFI approach is inferior to RAP, not sure why it'd deserve singling it out among the other inferior works.

Does RAP protect access to the MMU? Specifically CR0. If not then I’m sorry you lose. But yeah I love RAP. Way better than the policy enforced by KCoFI, which is obviously terribly imprecise for returns. And yes I totally missed citations on NK paper, sorry.

needless to say, i've got plans for addressing that (KERNSEAL from 2005 and some more from later years) but priorities have been elsewhere so i've got nothing to present you for now.

Have an approach that efficiently controls all aliases. I’d be interested to hear what you think. Basic idea is map all PTs as read only and create small interface while mediating access to CR0, CR3, CR4, and EFER. Overhead less than 3% for kcompile. nestedkernel.org

it's a step in the right direction (self-protection FTW :) but i don't see how it can have an acceptable perf impact (try 'du -s' or iperf which are not userland dominated workloads). also how are runtime codegen, large pages, etc handled?

Perf: only bad on PT updates (fork, mmap, etc) so kernel sees 0 overhead if not doing that. Codegen: pages mapped NX+W, then client requests code map, then scan, then RO+X. Large pages: not bad: only need 4 types: RO+NX (Const Data+PTs), RO+X (code), W+NX (data), USER (SMEP+SMAP)