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From: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
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Date: Tue, 22 Dec 2015 21:48:01 +0100
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Subject: [kernel-hardening] Re: [RFC][PATCH 1/7] mm/slab_common.c: Add common support for slab
 saniziation
To: Laura Abbott <laura@labbott.name>, Christoph Lameter <cl@linux.com>, Pekka Enberg <penberg@kernel.org>, David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>, Joonsoo Kim <iamjoonsoo.kim@lge.com>, Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: linux-mm@kvack.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>, kernel-hardening@lists.openwall.com, Mathias Krause <minipli@googlemail.com>
List-ID: <kernel-hardening.lists.openwall.com>

On 22.12.2015 4:40, Laura Abbott wrote:
> Each of the different allocators (SLAB/SLUB/SLOB) handles
> clearing of objects differently depending on configuration.
> Add common infrastructure for selecting sanitization levels
> (off, slow path only, partial, full) and marking caches as
> appropriate.
> 
> All credit for the original work should be given to Brad Spengler and
> the PaX Team.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Laura Abbott <laura@labbott.name>
>  
> +#ifdef CONFIG_SLAB_MEMORY_SANITIZE
> +#ifdef CONFIG_X86_64
> +#define SLAB_MEMORY_SANITIZE_VALUE       '\xfe'
> +#else
> +#define SLAB_MEMORY_SANITIZE_VALUE       '\xff'
> +#endif
> +enum slab_sanitize_mode {
> +	/* No sanitization */
> +	SLAB_SANITIZE_OFF = 0,
> +
> +	/* Partial sanitization happens only on the slow path */
> +	SLAB_SANITIZE_PARTIAL_SLOWPATH = 1,

Can you explain more about this variant? I wonder who might find it useful
except someone getting a false sense of security, but cheaper.
It sounds like wanting the cake and eat it too :)
I would be surprised if such IMHO half-solution existed in the original
PAX_MEMORY_SANITIZE too?

Or is there something that guarantees that the objects freed on hotpath won't
stay there for long so the danger of leak is low? (And what about
use-after-free?) It depends on further slab activity, no? (I'm not that familiar
with SLUB, but I would expect the hotpath there being similar to SLAB freeing
the object on per-cpu array_cache. But, it seems the PARTIAL_SLOWPATH is not
implemented for SLAB, so there might be some fundamental difference I'm missing.)