Re: [RFC PATCH 0/5] mm/slub: preserve previous object lifetime

[Harry Yoo <harry@kernel.org>]

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Hi Pengpeng,

On 6/11/26 3:39 PM, Pengpeng Hou wrote:
> SLAB_STORE_USER currently stores one allocation track and one free track
> for an object. This is useful, but it loses part of the previous lifetime
> when the object is reused: the new allocation overwrites the allocation
> track, and a later stale free can overwrite the free track.

I'm not sure what you meant by "stale free", UAF is accessing object
that are freed. What makes the free "stale"?

In general, I don't think slab_debug=UP is the right tool to debug
use-after-frees, because slab will never know _when_ the object was
overwritten. It can only tell that somebody has overwritten freed
objects by checking if the object content is POISON_FREE or POISON_END.

KASAN is a better tool to debug use-after-frees, because it can
tell you which kernel code is accessing memory it shouldn't. (It also
quarantines slab objects to avoid immediately reusing the object for
better coverage).

So I have to ask, "Why not use KASAN instead?" before enhancing
slab_debug (neither is intended for production anyway).

> For free-after-reuse bugs, the report can therefore contain the victim
> allocation and the stale free, while the earlier alloc/free pair that
> explains where the stale pointer came from is no longer available.

Again, I'm confused. I have no idea what "free-after-reuse" means.
Objects cannot be reused until they are not freed, no?

-- 
Cheers,
Harry / Hyeonggon

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