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Message-ID: <CAK8P3a3BA2BueHOuOiszEzkBtA80QDdo3wgX+62=KXCdi9wScQ@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2018 22:21:19 +0100
From: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>
To: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
Cc: Ard Biesheuvel <ard.biesheuvel@...aro.org>, Daniel Micay <danielmicay@...il.com>, 
	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...nel.org>, Kees Cook <keescook@...omium.org>, 
	Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@...ux.intel.com>, Alexander Popov <alex.popov@...ux.com>, 
	Kernel Hardening <kernel-hardening@...ts.openwall.com>, PaX Team <pageexec@...email.hu>, 
	Brad Spengler <spender@...ecurity.net>, Andy Lutomirski <luto@...nel.org>, 
	Tycho Andersen <tycho@...ho.ws>, Laura Abbott <labbott@...hat.com>, Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@....com>, 
	Borislav Petkov <bp@...en8.de>, Richard Sandiford <richard.sandiford@....com>, 
	Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>, "H . Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>, 
	Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@...llo.nl>, "Dmitry V . Levin" <ldv@...linux.org>, 
	Emese Revfy <re.emese@...il.com>, Jonathan Corbet <corbet@....net>, 
	Andrey Ryabinin <aryabinin@...tuozzo.com>, 
	"Kirill A . Shutemov" <kirill.shutemov@...ux.intel.com>, Thomas Garnier <thgarnie@...gle.com>, 
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>, Alexei Starovoitov <ast@...nel.org>, Josef Bacik <jbacik@...com>, 
	Masami Hiramatsu <mhiramat@...nel.org>, Nicholas Piggin <npiggin@...il.com>, 
	Al Viro <viro@...iv.linux.org.uk>, "David S . Miller" <davem@...emloft.net>, 
	Ding Tianhong <dingtianhong@...wei.com>, David Woodhouse <dwmw@...zon.co.uk>, 
	Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@...hat.com>, Steven Rostedt <rostedt@...dmis.org>, 
	Dominik Brodowski <linux@...inikbrodowski.net>, Juergen Gross <jgross@...e.com>, 
	Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>, Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@...el.com>, 
	Mathias Krause <minipli@...glemail.com>, Vikas Shivappa <vikas.shivappa@...ux.intel.com>, 
	Kyle Huey <me@...ehuey.com>, Dmitry Safonov <dsafonov@...tuozzo.com>, 
	Will Deacon <will.deacon@....com>, X86 ML <x86@...nel.org>, 
	LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH RFC v9 4/7] x86/entry: Erase kernel stack in syscall_trace_enter()

On Tue, Mar 6, 2018 at 10:01 PM, Linus Torvalds
<torvalds@...ux-foundation.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 6, 2018 at 12:42 PM, Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de> wrote:
>>
>> Forcing gcc to allocate a stack slot and zero-initialize it should
>> find many bugs by adding valid warnings, but also add lots of
>> false positives as well as prevent important optimizations in other
>> places that are actually well-defined.
>
> Oh, no, the "force gcc to allocate a stack slot" would be absolutely insane.
>
> You should never do that. Anybody who does that should be shot.
>
> But you don't have to force any stack allocation. You should just
> initialize it to zero (*without* the stack allocation).
>
> Then the optimization passes will just remove the initialization in
> 99.9% of all cases. Only very occasionally - when gcc cannot see it
> being overwritten - would it remain. And those are exactly the cases
> where you *want* it to remain.

Right, there are two separate problems: the missing warnings
and the actual uninitialized use. Allocating the stack slots would
address both but only at an enormous cost. Assigning a value
would still have a cost, as it would prevent certain other optimizations,
and it wouldn't help find the missing initializations,
but the cost would obviously be much lower.

      Arnd

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