Reply-To: alex.popov@linux.com
Subject: Re: [v3] mm: Add SLUB free list pointer obfuscation
To: Christopher Lameter <cl@linux.com>, Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
        Pekka Enberg <penberg@kernel.org>,
        David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>,
        Joonsoo Kim <iamjoonsoo.kim@lge.com>,
        "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>,
        Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>, Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org>,
        Andy Lutomirski <luto@kernel.org>,
        Nicolas Pitre <nicolas.pitre@linaro.org>, Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>,
        Daniel Mack <daniel@zonque.org>,
        Sebastian Andrzej Siewior <bigeasy@linutronix.de>,
        Sergey Senozhatsky <sergey.senozhatsky@gmail.com>,
        Helge Deller <deller@gmx.de>, Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>,
        Linux-MM <linux-mm@kvack.org>, Tycho Andersen <tycho@docker.com>,
        LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        "kernel-hardening@lists.openwall.com" 
        <kernel-hardening@lists.openwall.com>
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From: Alexander Popov <alex.popov@linux.com>
Message-ID: <4a6c0105-b084-aa87-6a2b-0650613df6ac@linux.com>
Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2017 23:17:19 +0300
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Hello Christopher and Kees,

Excuse me for the delayed reply.

On 28.07.2017 02:53, Christopher Lameter wrote:
> On Fri, 28 Jul 2017, Alexander Popov wrote:
> 
>> I don't really like ignoring double-free. I think, that:
>>   - it will hide dangerous bugs in the kernel,
>>   - it can make some kernel exploits more stable.
>> I would rather add BUG_ON to set_freepointer() behind SLAB_FREELIST_HARDENED. Is
>> it fine?
> 
> I think Kees already added some logging output.

Hm, I don't see anything like that in v4 of "SLUB free list pointer
obfuscation": https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/9864165/

>> At the same time avoiding the consequences of some double-free errors is better
>> than not doing that. It may be considered as kernel "self-healing", I don't
>> know. I can prepare a second patch for do_slab_free(), as you described. Would
>> you like it?
> 
> The SLUB allocator is already self healing if you enable the option to do
> so on bootup (covers more than just the double free case). What you
> propose here is no different than that and just another way of having
> similar functionality. In the best case it would work the same way.

Ok, I see. Thanks.

Best regards,
Alexander