[PATCH v2 1/4] mm: security: introduce init_on_alloc=1 and init_on_free=1 boot options

[Michal Hocko]

On Fri 17-05-19 09:36:36, Kees Cook wrote:
> On Fri, May 17, 2019 at 04:20:48PM +0200, Michal Hocko wrote:
> > On Fri 17-05-19 16:11:32, Alexander Potapenko wrote:
> > > On Fri, May 17, 2019 at 4:04 PM Michal Hocko <mhocko at kernel.org> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > On Tue 14-05-19 16:35:34, Alexander Potapenko wrote:
> > > > > The new options are needed to prevent possible information leaks and
> > > > > make control-flow bugs that depend on uninitialized values more
> > > > > deterministic.
> > > > >
> > > > > init_on_alloc=1 makes the kernel initialize newly allocated pages and heap
> > > > > objects with zeroes. Initialization is done at allocation time at the
> > > > > places where checks for __GFP_ZERO are performed.
> > > > >
> > > > > init_on_free=1 makes the kernel initialize freed pages and heap objects
> > > > > with zeroes upon their deletion. This helps to ensure sensitive data
> > > > > doesn't leak via use-after-free accesses.
> > > >
> > > > Why do we need both? The later is more robust because even free memory
> > > > cannot be sniffed and the overhead might be shifted from the allocation
> > > > context (e.g. to RCU) but why cannot we stick to a single model?
> > > init_on_free appears to be slower because of cache effects. It's
> > > several % in the best case vs. <1% for init_on_alloc.
> > 
> > This doesn't really explain why we need both.
> 
> There are a couple reasons. The first is that once we have hardware with
> memory tagging (e.g. arm64's MTE) we'll need both on_alloc and on_free
> hooks to do change the tags. With MTE, zeroing comes for "free" with
> tagging (though tagging is as slow as zeroing, so it's really the tagging
> that is free...), so we'll need to re-use the init_on_free infrastructure.

I am not sure I follow, but ...
> 
> The second reason is for very paranoid use-cases where in-memory
> data lifetime is desired to be minimized. There are various arguments
> for/against the realism of the associated threat models, but given that
> we'll need the infrastructre for MTE anyway, and there are people who
> want wipe-on-free behavior no matter what the performance cost, it seems
> reasonable to include it in this series.
> 
> All that said, init_on_alloc looks desirable enough that distros will
> likely build with it enabled by default (I hope), and the very paranoid
> users will switch to (or additionally enable) init_on_free for their
> systems.

... this should all be part of the changelog.
-- 
Michal Hocko
SUSE Labs