linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] string.h: work around for increased stack usage

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] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Date:   Tue, 5 Dec 2017 14:02:20 -0800
From:   Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>
To:     Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>
Cc:     Kees Cook <keescook@...omium.org>,
        Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@...nel.org>,
        linux-media@...r.kernel.org, kasan-dev@...glegroups.com,
        Dmitry Vyukov <dvyukov@...gle.com>,
        Alexander Potapenko <glider@...gle.com>,
        Andrey Ryabinin <aryabinin@...tuozzo.com>,
        linux-kbuild@...r.kernel.org, stable@...r.kernel.org,
        Daniel Micay <danielmicay@...il.com>,
        Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>,
        Martin Wilck <mwilck@...e.com>,
        Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@...el.com>,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] string.h: work around for increased stack usage

On Tue,  5 Dec 2017 22:51:19 +0100 Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de> wrote:

> The hardened strlen() function causes rather large stack usage in at
> least one file in the kernel, in particular when CONFIG_KASAN is enabled:
> 
> drivers/media/usb/em28xx/em28xx-dvb.c: In function 'em28xx_dvb_init':
> drivers/media/usb/em28xx/em28xx-dvb.c:2062:1: error: the frame size of 3256 bytes is larger than 204 bytes [-Werror=frame-larger-than=]
> 
> Analyzing this problem led to the discovery that gcc fails to merge the
> stack slots for the i2c_board_info[] structures after we strlcpy() into
> them, due to the 'noreturn' attribute on the source string length check.
> 
> I reported this as a gcc bug, but it is unlikely to get fixed for gcc-8,
> since it is relatively easy to work around, and it gets triggered rarely.
> An earlier workaround I did added an empty inline assembly statement
> before the call to fortify_panic(), which works surprisingly well,
> but is really ugly and unintuitive.
> 
> This is a new approach to the same problem, this time addressing it by
> not calling the 'extern __real_strnlen()' function for string constants
> where __builtin_strlen() is a compile-time constant and therefore known
> to be safe. We do this by checking if the last character in the string
> is a compile-time constant '\0'. If it is, we can assume that
> strlen() of the string is also constant. As a side-effect, this should
> also improve the object code output for any other call of strlen()
> on a string constant.
> 
> Cc: stable@...r.kernel.org

I'll add

Fixes: 6974f0c4555 ("include/linux/string.h: add the option of fortified string.h functions")

to simplify stable@'s life.

> Link: https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=82365
> Link: https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/9980413/
> Link: https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/9974047/
> Signed-off-by: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>
>
> ...
>
> --- a/include/linux/string.h
> +++ b/include/linux/string.h
> @@ -259,7 +259,8 @@ __FORTIFY_INLINE __kernel_size_t strlen(const char *p)
>  {
>  	__kernel_size_t ret;
>  	size_t p_size = __builtin_object_size(p, 0);
> -	if (p_size == (size_t)-1)
> +	if (p_size == (size_t)-1 ||
> +	    (__builtin_constant_p(p[p_size - 1]) && p[p_size - 1] == '\0'))
>  		return __builtin_strlen(p);
>  	ret = strnlen(p, p_size);
>  	if (p_size <= ret)

Let's have some sympathy for our poor readers?

--- a/include/linux/string.h~stringh-work-around-for-increased-stack-usage-fix
+++ a/include/linux/string.h
@@ -259,6 +259,8 @@ __FORTIFY_INLINE __kernel_size_t strlen(
 {
 	__kernel_size_t ret;
 	size_t p_size = __builtin_object_size(p, 0);
+
+	/* Work around gcc excess stack consumption issue */
 	if (p_size == (size_t)-1 ||
 	    (__builtin_constant_p(p[p_size - 1]) && p[p_size - 1] == '\0'))
 		return __builtin_strlen(p);
_