[PATCH v4 3/5] stack: Optionally randomize kernel stack offset each syscall

David Laight David.Laight at ACULAB.COM
Tue Jun 23 09:42:30 EDT 2020


From: Kees Cook
> Sent: 23 June 2020 01:56
> On Mon, Jun 22, 2020 at 08:05:10PM -0400, Arvind Sankar wrote:
> > But I still don't see anything _stopping_ the compiler from optimizing
> > this better in the future. The "=m" is not a barrier: it just informs
> > the compiler that the asm produces an output value in *ptr (and no other
> > outputs). If nothing can consume that output, it doesn't stop the
> > compiler from freeing the allocation immediately after the asm instead
> > of at the end of the function.
> 
> Ah, yeah, I get what you mean.
> 
> > I'm talking about something like
> > 	asm volatile("" : : "r" (ptr) : "memory");
> > which tells the compiler that the asm may change memory arbitrarily.
> 
> Yeah, I will adjust it.
> 
> > Here, we don't use it really as a barrier, but to tell the compiler that
> > the asm may have stashed the value of ptr somewhere in memory, so it's
> > not free to reuse the space that it pointed to until the function
> > returns (unless it can prove that nothing accesses memory, not just that
> > nothing accesses ptr).

Do you need another asm volatile("" : : "r" (ptr) : "memory");
(or similar) at the bottom of the function - that the compiler thinks
might access the memory whose address it thought got saved earlier?

I wonder if it would be easier to allocate the stack space
in the asm wrapper? At least as an architecture option.

	David

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