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Date: Fri, 12 May 2017 14:00:10 -0700
From: Kees Cook <keescook@...omium.org>
To: Russell King - ARM Linux <linux@...linux.org.uk>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>, Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@....com>, 
	Brian Gerst <brgerst@...il.com>, Kernel Hardening <kernel-hardening@...ts.openwall.com>, 
	Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@....com>, Heiko Carstens <heiko.carstens@...ibm.com>, 
	Oleg Nesterov <oleg@...hat.com>, David Howells <dhowells@...hat.com>, 
	Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@...el.com>, "H . Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>, Ingo Molnar <mingo@...nel.org>, 
	Pavel Tikhomirov <ptikhomirov@...tuozzo.com>, linux-s390 <linux-s390@...r.kernel.org>, 
	"the arch/x86 maintainers" <x86@...nel.org>, Christian Borntraeger <borntraeger@...ibm.com>, 
	René Nyffenegger <mail@...enyffenegger.ch>, 
	Greg KH <greg@...ah.com>, "Paul E . McKenney" <paulmck@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>, 
	Rik van Riel <riel@...hat.com>, Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>, Will Deacon <will.deacon@....com>, 
	Borislav Petkov <bp@...en8.de>, Al Viro <viro@...iv.linux.org.uk>, 
	Andy Lutomirski <luto@...nel.org>, Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@...hat.com>, 
	Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>, Ingo Molnar <mingo@...hat.com>, 
	"linux-arm-kernel@...ts.infradead.org" <linux-arm-kernel@...ts.infradead.org>, 
	Linux API <linux-api@...r.kernel.org>, LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>, 
	Daniel Micay <danielmicay@...il.com>, James Morse <james.morse@....com>, 
	"Eric W . Biederman" <ebiederm@...ssion.com>, Martin Schwidefsky <schwidefsky@...ibm.com>, 
	Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@...hat.com>, Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>, 
	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>, Thomas Garnier <thgarnie@...gle.com>, 
	"Kirill A . Shutemov" <kirill.shutemov@...ux.intel.com>
Subject: Re: Re: [PATCH v9 1/4] syscalls: Verify address
 limit before returning to user-mode

On Fri, May 12, 2017 at 1:45 PM, Russell King - ARM Linux
<linux@...linux.org.uk> wrote:
> On Fri, May 12, 2017 at 10:30:44PM +0200, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
>> On Fri, May 12, 2017 at 09:21:06PM +0100, Russell King - ARM Linux wrote:
>> > On Fri, May 12, 2017 at 12:30:02PM -0700, Kees Cook wrote:
>> > > I'm clearly not explaining things well enough. I shouldn't say
>> > > "corruption", I should say "malicious manipulation". The methodology
>> > > of attacks against the stack are quite different from the other kinds
>> > > of attacks like use-after-free, heap overflow, etc. Being able to
>> > > exhaust the kernel stack (either due to deep recursion or unbounded
>> > > alloca())
>> >
>> > I really hope we don't have alloca() use in the kernel.  Do you have
>> > evidence to support that assertion?
>> >
>> > IMHO alloca() (or similar) should not be present in any kernel code
>> > because we have a limited stack - we have kmalloc() etc for that kind
>> > of thing.
>>
>> On stack variable length arrays get implemented by the compiler doing
>> alloca(), and we sadly have a few of those around.
>
> I hope their size is appropriately limited, but something tells me it
> would be foolish to assume that.
>
>> But yes, fully agreed on the desirability of alloca() and things.
>
> Hmm, I wonder if -fno-builtin-alloca would prevent those... it looks
> like it certainly would prevent an explicit alloca() call.

Building with -Werror=vla is exciting. :)

A lot of it is in crypto (which are relatively static sizes, just
using function callbacks), but there is plenty more.

-Kees

-- 
Kees Cook
Pixel Security

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