Re: [PATCH 1/3] mm: security: introduce the init_allocations=1 boot option

[Alexander Potapenko <glider@google.com>]

On Thu, Apr 18, 2019 at 6:35 PM Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@intel.com> wrote:
>
> On 4/18/19 8:42 AM, Alexander Potapenko wrote:
> > This option adds the possibility to initialize newly allocated pages and
> > heap objects with zeroes. This is needed to prevent possible information
> > leaks and make the control-flow bugs that depend on uninitialized values
> > more deterministic.
>
> Isn't it better to do this at free time rather than allocation time?  If
> doing it at free, you can't even have information leaks for pages that
> are in the allocator.
I should have mentioned this in the patch description, as this
question is being asked every time I send a patch :)
If we want to avoid double initialization and take advantage of
__GFP_NOINIT (see the second and third patches in the series) we need
to do initialize the memory at allocation time, because free() and
free_pages() don't accept GFP flags.



-- 
Alexander Potapenko
Software Engineer

Google Germany GmbH
Erika-Mann-Straße, 33
80636 München

Geschäftsführer: Paul Manicle, Halimah DeLaine Prado
Registergericht und -nummer: Hamburg, HRB 86891
Sitz der Gesellschaft: Hamburg