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Date: Sun, 17 Jan 2016 09:59:52 +0100
From: Jens Gustedt <jens.gustedt@...ia.fr>
To: musl@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: Re: Non-stub setvbuf

Am Samstag, den 16.01.2016, 20:43 -0500 schrieb Rich Felker:
> Right now, musl's stdio setvbuf function does nothing but set the
> buffering mode; it does not honor the buffer provided by the caller.
> This is perfectly conforming (whether or how the buffer is used is
> unspecified), but I realized from the recent thread about OpenSSH's
> CVE-2016-0777 on oss-security that a non-stub setvbuf admits a nice
> type of hardening:
> 
> http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/01/15/15
> 
> In short, the application has no way to scrub implementation-internal
> stdio buffers that might contain sensitive data read from or written
> to files, but it can scrub buffers it provides via setvbuf. So, I'd
> like to start actually using the latter, so that apps that attempt
> this hardening measure can benefit from it on musl like they would on
> other implementations.

How about just using setvbuf as an indication that the user wants the
buffer to be scrubbed? And so just zero it?

I wouldn't expect setvbuf to be used in places that are performance
critical, so an additional memset shouldn't do much harm, I think.

Jens


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