Re: [kernel-hardening] Re: [PATCH v2] mm: Add SLUB free list pointer obfuscation

[Tycho Andersen <tycho@docker.com>]

On Thu, Jun 29, 2017 at 01:54:13PM -0400, Rik van Riel wrote:
> On Thu, 2017-06-29 at 10:47 -0700, Kees Cook wrote:
> > On Thu, Jun 29, 2017 at 10:05 AM, Christoph Lameter <cl@linux.com>
> > wrote:
> > > On Sun, 25 Jun 2017, Kees Cook wrote:
> > > 
> > > > The difference gets lost in the noise, but if the above is
> > > > sensible,
> > > > it's 0.07% slower. ;)
> > > 
> > > Hmmm... These differences add up. Also in a repetative benchmark
> > > like that
> > > you do not see the impact that the additional cacheline use in the
> > > cpu
> > > cache has on larger workloads. Those may be pushed over the edge of
> > > l1 or
> > > l2 capacity at some point which then causes drastic regressions.
> > 
> > Even if that is true, it may be worth it to some people to have the
> > protection. Given that is significantly hampers a large class of heap
> > overflow attacks[1], I think it's an important change to have. I'm
> > not
> > suggesting this be on by default, it's cleanly behind
> > CONFIG-controlled macros, and is very limited in scope. If you can
> > Ack
> > it we can let system builders decide if they want to risk a possible
> > performance hit. I'm pretty sure most distros would like to have this
> > protection.
> 
> I could certainly see it being useful for all kinds of portable
> and network-connected systems where security is simply much
> more important than performance.

Indeed, I believe we would enable this in our kernels.

Cheers,

Tycho