linux-kernel - Re: vmalloced stacks and scatterwalk_map_and

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Date:   Fri, 4 Nov 2016 10:05:21 -0700
From:   Eric Biggers <ebiggers@...gle.com>
To:     Andy Lutomirski <luto@...capital.net>
Cc:     linux-crypto@...r.kernel.org,
        Herbert Xu <herbert@...dor.apana.org.au>,
        "linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        Andrew Lutomirski <luto@...nel.org>,
        "linux-mm@...ck.org" <linux-mm@...ck.org>
Subject: Re: vmalloced stacks and scatterwalk_map_and_copy()

On Thu, Nov 03, 2016 at 08:57:49PM -0700, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
> 
> The crypto request objects can live on the stack just fine.  It's the
> request buffers that need to live elsewhere (or the alternative
> interfaces can be used, or the crypto core code can start using
> something other than scatterlists).
> 

There are cases where a crypto operation is done on a buffer embedded in a
request object.  The example I'm aware of is in the GCM implementation
(crypto/gcm.c).  Basically it needs to encrypt 16 zero bytes prepended with the
actual data, so it fills a buffer in the request object
(crypto_gcm_req_priv_ctx.auth_tag) with zeroes and builds a new scatterlist
which covers both this buffer and the original data scatterlist.

Granted, GCM provides the aead interface not the skcipher interface, and
currently there is no AEAD_REQUEST_ON_STACK() macro like there is a
SKCIPHER_REQUEST_ON_STACK() macro.  So maybe no one is creating aead requests on
the stack right now.  But it's something to watch out for.

Eric