linux-hardening - Re: [wish] Flexible array members in unions

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Message-ID: <a9f2739c-7582-853e-ea94-e13f5ea4698@codesourcery.com>
Date:   Thu, 11 May 2023 22:52:25 +0000
From:   Joseph Myers <joseph@...esourcery.com>
To:     Kees Cook <keescook@...omium.org>
CC:     Alejandro Colomar <alx.manpages@...il.com>, GCC <gcc@....gnu.org>,
        Alejandro Colomar <alx@...nx.com>,
        Andrew Clayton <a.clayton@...nx.com>,
        Andrew Clayton <andrew@...ital-domain.net>,
        <linux-hardening@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [wish] Flexible array members in unions

On Thu, 11 May 2023, Kees Cook via Gcc wrote:

> Okay, understood. If this is a C-only thing, we can ignore the C++
> impact.

We're a lot more careful lately in WG14 about checking for C++ 
compatibility issues and expecting approval from the liaison group for 
anything with possible compatibility concerns for syntax in the common 
subset of C and C++.  So, no, we can't ignore the C++ impact for adding 
empty types; it would need careful consideration in the liaison group.

> What depends on the "different objects have different addresses"
> principle? And why do unions not break this -- they could point to the
> same locations within the object? And don't flexible arrays already need
> special handling in this regard?

"including a pointer to an object and a subobject at its beginning" and 
"one is a pointer to one past the end of one array object and the other is 
a pointer to the start of a different array object that happens to 
immediately follow the first array object in the address space" are both 
cases included in the semantics for comparison operators.  If you allow 
zero-size objects you get more special cases there (and quite possibly 
affect optimizations based on points-to analysis that can determine 
pointers are based on different objects, if an object is not known at 
compile time to have nonzero size).

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@...esourcery.com