Re: [PATCH 1/3] ubsan: Add trap instrumentation option

[Andrey Ryabinin]

On 11/20/19 4:06 AM, Kees Cook wrote:


> +config UBSAN_TRAP
> +	bool "On Sanitizer warnings, stop the offending kernel thread"

That description seems inaccurate and confusing. It's not about kernel threads.
UBSAN may trigger in any context - kernel thread/user process/interrupts... 
Probably most of the kernel code runs in the context of user process, so "stop the offending kernel thread"
doesn't sound right.



> +	depends on UBSAN
> +	depends on $(cc-option, -fsanitize-undefined-trap-on-error)
> +	help
> +	  Building kernels with Sanitizer features enabled tends to grow
> +	  the kernel size by over 5%, due to adding all the debugging
> +	  text on failure paths. To avoid this, Sanitizer instrumentation
> +	  can just issue a trap. This reduces the kernel size overhead but
> +	  turns all warnings into full thread-killing exceptions.

I think we should mention that enabling this option also has a potential to 
turn some otherwise harmless bugs into more severe problems like lockups, kernel panic etc..
So the people who enable this would better understand what they signing up for.