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Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2024 11:17:52 +0200
From: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
To: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
Cc: Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@arm.com>, Will Deacon <will@kernel.org>,
	Boqun Feng <boqun.feng@gmail.com>,
	Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>,
	Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>, Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>,
	Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com>, x86@kernel.org,
	"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>, Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>,
	Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@arm.com>,
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	Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
	"David S. Miller" <davem@davemloft.net>,
	David Ahern <dsahern@kernel.org>,
	Eric Dumazet <edumazet@google.com>, Paolo Abeni <pabeni@redhat.com>,
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	netdev@vger.kernel.org, linux-hardening@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/4] locking/atomic/x86: Silence intentional wrapping
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On Wed, Apr 24, 2024 at 04:20:20PM -0700, Kees Cook wrote:

> > This is arse-about-face. Signed stuff wraps per -fno-strict-overflow.
> > We've been writing code for years under that assumption.
> 
> Right, which is why this is going to take time to roll out. :) What we
> were really doing with -fno-strict-overflow was getting rid of undefined
> behavior. That was really really horrible; we don't need the compiler
> hallucinating.

Right, but that then got us well defined semantics for signed overflow.

> > You want to mark the non-wrapping case.
> 
> What we want is lack of ambiguity. Having done these kinds of things in
> the kernel for a while now, I have strong evidence that we get much better
> results with the "fail safe" approach, but start by making it non-fatal.
> That way we get full coverage, but we don't melt the world for anyone
> that doesn't want it, and we can shake things out over a few years. For
> example, it has worked well for CONFIG_FORTIFY, CONFIG_UBSAN_BOUNDS,
> KCFI, etc.

The non-fatal argument doesn't have bearing on the mark warp or mark
non-wrap argument though.

> The riskier condition is having something wrap when it wasn't expected
> (e.g. allocations, pointer offsets, etc), so we start by defining our
> regular types as non-wrapping, and annotate the wrapping types (or
> specific calculations or functions).

But but most of those you mention are unsigned. Are you saying you're
making all unsigned variables non-wrap by default too? That's bloody
insane.

> For signed types in particular, wrapping is overwhelmingly the
> uncommon case, so from a purely "how much annotations is needed"
> perspective, marking wrapping is also easiest. Yes, there are cases of
> expected wrapping, but we'll track them all down and get them marked
> unambiguously. 

But I am confused now, because above you seem to imply you're making
unsigned non-wrap too, and there wrapping is *far* more common, and I
must say I hate this wrapping_add() thing with a passion.

> One thing on the short list is atomics, so here we are. :)

Well, there are wrapping and non-wrapping users of atomic. If only C had
generics etc.. (and yeah, _Generic doesn't really count).