[PATCH v4] arm64: kernel: implement fast refcount checking

[Ard Biesheuvel]

On 31 July 2017 at 22:16, Kees Cook <keescook at chromium.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 31, 2017 at 12:22 PM, Ard Biesheuvel
> <ard.biesheuvel at linaro.org> wrote:
>> v4: Implement add-from-zero checking using a conditional compare rather than
>>     a conditional branch, which I omitted from v3 due to the 10% performance
>>     hit: this will result in the new refcount to be written back to memory
>>     before invoking the handler, which is more in line with the other checks,
>>     and is apparently much easier on the branch predictor, given that there
>>     is no performance hit whatsoever.
>
> So refcount_inc() and refcount_add(n, ...) will write 1 and n
> respectively, then hit the handler to saturate?

Yes, but this is essentially what occurs on overflow and sub-to-zero
as well: the result is always stored before hitting the handler. Isn't
this the case for x86 as well?

> That seems entirely
> fine to me: checking inc-from-zero is just a protection against a
> possible double-free condition. It's still technically a race, but a
> narrow race on a rare condition is better than being able to always
> win it.
>

Indeed.

> Nice!
>

Thanks!