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Date: Thu, 29 Feb 2024 15:40:13 +1100
From: Tobin Harding <me@tobin.cc>
To: Tycho Andersen <tycho@tycho.pizza>
Cc: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>, Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>,
	Guixiong Wei <guixiongwei@gmail.com>,
	linux-hardening@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] leaking_addresses: Provide mechanism to scan binary files
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On Thu, Feb 22, 2024 at 04:49:26PM -0700, Tycho Andersen wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 22, 2024 at 01:00:40PM -0800, Kees Cook wrote:
> > > This does bring up some interesting questions. From off-list
> > > discussions with Tobin, I believe he is not particularly interested in
> > > maintaining this script any more. I was never set up to do the PRs
> > > myself, I agreed to be a reviewer to help Tobin out. I'm happy to
> > > adopt it if that makes sense, but I'm curious about the future of the
> > > script:
> > > 
> > > 1. is it useful? (seems like yes if you're adding features)
> > 
> > Yes, LKP runs it as part of 0-day, and it's found leaks in the past[1].
> > (Though its usage could be improved.)
> 
> Oh! That is good news :)
> 
> > > 2. does it make sense to live here as a separate thing? should we
> > >    perhaps run it as part of kselftests or similar? I think that e.g.
> > >    681ff0181bbf ("x86/mm/init/32: Stop printing the virtual memory
> > >    layout") was not discovered with this script, but maybe if we put it
> > >    inline with some other stuff people regularly run more of these would
> > >    fall out? Maybe it makes sense to live somewhere else entirely
> > >    (syzkaller)? I can probably set up some x86/arm64 infra to run it
> > >    regularly, but that won't catch other less popular arches.
> > 
> > We could certainly do that. It would need some work to clean it up,
> > though -- it seems like it wasn't designed to run as root (which is how
> > LKP runs it, and likely how at least some CIs would run it).
> > 
> > > 3. perl. I'm mostly not a perl programmer, but would be happy to
> > >    rewrite it in python pending the outcome of discussion above.
> > 
> > I am not a Perl fan either. It does work as-is, though. Address leaks,
> > while worth fixing, are relatively low priority over all, so I wouldn't
> > prioritize a rewrite very highly.
> 
> Yep, fair enough.

Thanks for taking this in through your tree Kees! And Tycho for
picking up the pieces I dropped :)

I can help review a re-write if it helps though I don't write Python
daily and I am long way away from kernel work these days so I doubt
I'd be all that much help.

I originally wrote it in Perl because I figured it would be easier to
get past the old guys, six moths later I regretted the decision when I
tried to re-read it.

Thanks for ping'ing me.

All the best,
Tobin.