netdev - Re: [Security] [SECURITY] Fix leaking of kernel heap addresses via /proc

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Date:	Sun, 07 Nov 2010 17:11:06 +0000
From:	Ben Hutchings <ben@...adent.org.uk>
To:	Oliver Hartkopp <socketcan@...tkopp.net>
Cc:	David Miller <davem@...emloft.net>, torvalds@...ux-foundation.org,
	drosenberg@...curity.com, chas@....nrl.navy.mil,
	kuznet@....inr.ac.ru, pekkas@...core.fi, jmorris@...ei.org,
	yoshfuji@...ux-ipv6.org, kaber@...sh.net,
	remi.denis-courmont@...ia.com, netdev@...r.kernel.org,
	security@...nel.org
Subject: Re: [Security] [SECURITY] Fix leaking of kernel heap addresses via
 /proc

On Sun, 2010-11-07 at 11:28 +0100, Oliver Hartkopp wrote:
[...]
> The layout break was ok in this case as the people using the CAN procfs stuff
> do this only when facing problems (with their applications) at runtime.
> 
> A discussed approach that won't break the procfs layout was to set the values
> to "0" and only fill them with real content depending on CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO .
> 
> Would that fit here?
> 
> Or maybe a different config option CONFIG_DEBUG_KERNEL_ADDR would do the job,
> as i don't know which distros enable CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO by default ...

I believe most distributions now enable CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO (though the
debug information is then stripped and shipped in separate packages).  I
also dislike this idea of an implicit trade-off between debugging and
security; such a trade-off may be necessary but then it should be
explicit.

Ben.

-- 
Ben Hutchings
Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it makes it worse.

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