linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v4 0/3] Fix bugs and performance of kstack offset randomisation

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Message-ID: <20260119162524.28375Cf0-hca@linux.ibm.com>
Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2026 17:25:24 +0100
From: Heiko Carstens <hca@...ux.ibm.com>
To: Ryan Roberts <ryan.roberts@....com>
Cc: Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@....com>, Will Deacon <will@...nel.org>,
        Huacai Chen <chenhuacai@...nel.org>,
        Madhavan Srinivasan <maddy@...ux.ibm.com>,
        Michael Ellerman <mpe@...erman.id.au>, Paul Walmsley <pjw@...nel.org>,
        Palmer Dabbelt <palmer@...belt.com>, Albert Ou <aou@...s.berkeley.edu>,
        Vasily Gorbik <gor@...ux.ibm.com>,
        Alexander Gordeev <agordeev@...ux.ibm.com>,
        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>, Ingo Molnar <mingo@...hat.com>,
        Borislav Petkov <bp@...en8.de>,
        Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@...ux.intel.com>, Kees Cook <kees@...nel.org>,
        "Gustavo A. R. Silva" <gustavoars@...nel.org>,
        Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>, Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@....com>,
        "Jason A. Donenfeld" <Jason@...c4.com>,
        Ard Biesheuvel <ardb@...nel.org>,
        Jeremy Linton <jeremy.linton@....com>,
        David Laight <david.laight.linux@...il.com>,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-arm-kernel@...ts.infradead.org,
        loongarch@...ts.linux.dev, linuxppc-dev@...ts.ozlabs.org,
        linux-riscv@...ts.infradead.org, linux-s390@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-hardening@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH v4 0/3] Fix bugs and performance of kstack offset
 randomisation

On Mon, Jan 19, 2026 at 01:01:07PM +0000, Ryan Roberts wrote:
> As I reported at [1], kstack offset randomisation suffers from a couple of bugs
> and, on arm64 at least, the performance is poor. This series attempts to fix
> both; patch 1 provides back-portable fixes for the functional bugs. Patches 2-3
> propose a performance improvement approach.
> 
> I've looked at a few different options but ultimately decided that Jeremy's
> original prng approach is the fastest. I made the argument that this approach is
> secure "enough" in the RFC [2] and the responses indicated agreement.
> 
> More details in the commit logs.
> 
> 
> Performance
> ===========
> 
> Mean and tail performance of 3 "small" syscalls was measured. syscall was made
> 10 million times and each individually measured and binned. These results have
> low noise so I'm confident that they are trustworthy.
> 
> The baseline is v6.18-rc5 with stack randomization turned *off*. So I'm showing
> performance cost of turning it on without any changes to the implementation,
> then the reduced performance cost of turning it on with my changes applied.

This adds 16 instructions to the system call fast path on s390, however
some quick measurements show that executing this extra code is within
noise ratio performance wise.

Acked-by: Heiko Carstens <hca@...ux.ibm.com> # s390