[3.13.y-ckt stable] Patch "lib: memzero_explicit: use barrier instead of OPTIMIZER_HIDE_VAR" has been added to staging queue

[Kamal Mostafa]

This is a note to let you know that I have just added a patch titled

    lib: memzero_explicit: use barrier instead of OPTIMIZER_HIDE_VAR

to the linux-3.13.y-queue branch of the 3.13.y-ckt extended stable tree 
which can be found at:

    http://kernel.ubuntu.com/git/ubuntu/linux.git/log/?h=linux-3.13.y-queue

This patch is scheduled to be released in version 3.13.11-ckt21.

If you, or anyone else, feels it should not be added to this tree, please 
reply to this email.

For more information about the 3.13.y-ckt tree, see
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/Dev/ExtendedStable

Thanks.
-Kamal

------

>From 99c5da5ed9648ecb515a259791f1685f6ed15655 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: mancha security <mancha1 at zoho.com>
Date: Wed, 18 Mar 2015 18:47:25 +0100
Subject: lib: memzero_explicit: use barrier instead of OPTIMIZER_HIDE_VAR

commit 0b053c9518292705736329a8fe20ef4686ffc8e9 upstream.

OPTIMIZER_HIDE_VAR(), as defined when using gcc, is insufficient to
ensure protection from dead store optimization.

For the random driver and crypto drivers, calls are emitted ...

  $ gdb vmlinux
  (gdb) disassemble memzero_explicit
  Dump of assembler code for function memzero_explicit:
    0xffffffff813a18b0 <+0>:	push   %rbp
    0xffffffff813a18b1 <+1>:	mov    %rsi,%rdx
    0xffffffff813a18b4 <+4>:	xor    %esi,%esi
    0xffffffff813a18b6 <+6>:	mov    %rsp,%rbp
    0xffffffff813a18b9 <+9>:	callq  0xffffffff813a7120 <memset>
    0xffffffff813a18be <+14>:	pop    %rbp
    0xffffffff813a18bf <+15>:	retq
  End of assembler dump.

  (gdb) disassemble extract_entropy
  [...]
    0xffffffff814a5009 <+313>:	mov    %r12,%rdi
    0xffffffff814a500c <+316>:	mov    $0xa,%esi
    0xffffffff814a5011 <+321>:	callq  0xffffffff813a18b0 <memzero_explicit>
    0xffffffff814a5016 <+326>:	mov    -0x48(%rbp),%rax
  [...]

... but in case in future we might use facilities such as LTO, then
OPTIMIZER_HIDE_VAR() is not sufficient to protect gcc from a possible
eviction of the memset(). We have to use a compiler barrier instead.

Minimal test example when we assume memzero_explicit() would *not* be
a call, but would have been *inlined* instead:

  static inline void memzero_explicit(void *s, size_t count)
  {
    memset(s, 0, count);
    <foo>
  }

  int main(void)
  {
    char buff[20];

    snprintf(buff, sizeof(buff) - 1, "test");
    printf("%s", buff);

    memzero_explicit(buff, sizeof(buff));
    return 0;
  }

With <foo> := OPTIMIZER_HIDE_VAR():

  (gdb) disassemble main
  Dump of assembler code for function main:
  [...]
   0x0000000000400464 <+36>:	callq  0x400410 <printf at plt>
   0x0000000000400469 <+41>:	xor    %eax,%eax
   0x000000000040046b <+43>:	add    $0x28,%rsp
   0x000000000040046f <+47>:	retq
  End of assembler dump.

With <foo> := barrier():

  (gdb) disassemble main
  Dump of assembler code for function main:
  [...]
   0x0000000000400464 <+36>:	callq  0x400410 <printf at plt>
   0x0000000000400469 <+41>:	movq   $0x0,(%rsp)
   0x0000000000400471 <+49>:	movq   $0x0,0x8(%rsp)
   0x000000000040047a <+58>:	movl   $0x0,0x10(%rsp)
   0x0000000000400482 <+66>:	xor    %eax,%eax
   0x0000000000400484 <+68>:	add    $0x28,%rsp
   0x0000000000400488 <+72>:	retq
  End of assembler dump.

As can be seen, movq, movq, movl are being emitted inlined
via memset().

Reference: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel.cryptoapi/13764/
Fixes: d4c5efdb9777 ("random: add and use memzero_explicit() for clearing data")
Cc: Theodore Ts'o <tytso at mit.edu>
Signed-off-by: mancha security <mancha1 at zoho.com>
Signed-off-by: Daniel Borkmann <daniel at iogearbox.net>
Acked-by: Hannes Frederic Sowa <hannes at stressinduktion.org>
Acked-by: Stephan Mueller <smueller at chronox.de>
Signed-off-by: Herbert Xu <herbert at gondor.apana.org.au>
Signed-off-by: Kamal Mostafa <kamal at canonical.com>
---
 lib/string.c | 2 +-
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/lib/string.c b/lib/string.c
index 43d0781..cb9ea21 100644
--- a/lib/string.c
+++ b/lib/string.c
@@ -598,7 +598,7 @@ EXPORT_SYMBOL(memset);
 void memzero_explicit(void *s, size_t count)
 {
 	memset(s, 0, count);
-	OPTIMIZER_HIDE_VAR(s);
+	barrier();
 }
 EXPORT_SYMBOL(memzero_explicit);

--
1.9.1