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Message-ID: <3807474.1586869616@warthog.procyon.org.uk>
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2020 14:06:56 +0100
From: David Howells <dhowells@...hat.com>
To: Waiman Long <longman@...hat.com>, herbert@...dor.apana.org.au
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Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/2] mm, treewide: Rename kzfree() to kfree_sensitive()
Waiman Long <longman@...hat.com> wrote:
> As said by Linus:
>
> A symmetric naming is only helpful if it implies symmetries in use.
> Otherwise it's actively misleading.
>
> In "kzalloc()", the z is meaningful and an important part of what the
> caller wants.
>
> In "kzfree()", the z is actively detrimental, because maybe in the
> future we really _might_ want to use that "memfill(0xdeadbeef)" or
> something. The "zero" part of the interface isn't even _relevant_.
>
> The main reason that kzfree() exists is to clear sensitive information
> that should not be leaked to other future users of the same memory
> objects.
>
> Rename kzfree() to kfree_sensitive() to follow the example of the
> recently added kvfree_sensitive() and make the intention of the API
> more explicit. In addition, memzero_explicit() is used to clear the
> memory to make sure that it won't get optimized away by the compiler.
>
> The renaming is done by using the command sequence:
>
> git grep -w --name-only kzfree |\
> xargs sed -i 's/\bkzfree\b/kfree_sensitive/'
>
> followed by some editing of the kfree_sensitive() kerneldoc and the
> use of memzero_explicit() instead of memset().
>
> Suggested-by: Joe Perches <joe@...ches.com>
> Signed-off-by: Waiman Long <longman@...hat.com>
Since this changes a lot of crypto stuff, does it make sense for it to go via
the crypto tree?
Acked-by: David Howells <dhowells@...hat.com>
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