Re: [PATCH 16/18] net: mpls: prevent bounds-check bypass via speculative execution

Alexei Starovoitov
2018-01-10T03:07:17Z

On Tue, Jan 09, 2018 at 06:22:09PM -0800, Dan Williams wrote:
>
> When you came up with that tweak you noted:
>
> "The following:
> [..]
> is generic and no speculative flows."

I meant 'no speculative control flow'
load speculation still happens.

>
> > This macro doesn't prevent speculation.
>
> It masks dangerous speculation. At least, I read nospec as "No
> Spectre" and it is a prefix used in the Spectre-v2 patches.

ahh. I thought 'nospec' means 'no speculation'.
I think it's too much of an honor to use bug name for the macro
that will be used in many places in the kernel.

> > I think array_access() was the best name so far.
>
> For other usages I need the pointer to the array element, also
> array_access() by itself is unsuitable for __fcheck_files because we
> still need rcu_dereference_raw() on the element de-reference. So, I
> think it's better to get a sanitized array element pointer which can
> be used with rcu, READ_ONCE(), etc... directly rather than try to do
> the access in the same macro.

makes sense, then array_ptr() should fit ?
I'm hearing rumors that the first cpu with variant 2 and 3 fixed
will be appearing in early 2019. Which is amazing considering cpu
release cycles, but it also means that variant 1 will stay with us
for long time and we better pick clean interface and name for it.