Re: [PATCH v2 0/6] Rework REFCOUNT_FULL using atomic_fetch_* operations

Kees Cook
2019-08-31T19:04:41Z

On Sat, Aug 31, 2019 at 08:48:56PM +0300, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
> It's been ~2 years since I looked at this code in detail, but IIRC, it
> looked like the inc-from-zero check was missing from the x86
> implementation because it requires a load/compare/increment/store
> sequence instead of a single increment instruction taking a memory
> operand. Was there more rationale at the time for omitting this
> particular case, and if so, was it based on a benchmark? Can we run it
> against this implementation as well?

It was based on providing a protection against the pre-exploitation case
(overflow: "something bad is about to happen, let's stop it") rather
than the post-exploitation case (inc from zero, "something bad already
happened, eek") with absolutely the fewest possible extra cycles, as
various subsystem maintainers had zero tolerance for any measurable
changes in refcounting performance.

I much prefer the full coverage, even if it's a tiny bit slower. And
based on the worse-case timings (where literally nothing else is
happening) it seems like these changes should be WELL under the noise.

--
Kees Cook