Re: [PATCH] leaking_addresses: Provide mechanism to scan binary files

Tycho Andersen
2024-02-22T23:49:30Z

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.

Tycho