Re: [kernel-hardening] Re: [RFC v4 PATCH 00/13] HARDENED_ATOMIC

[Rik van Riel]

On Thu, 2016-11-10 at 13:23 -0800, Kees Cook wrote:

> If we don't use opt-out for atomics, we're going to be in the same
> situation where we have to constantly review every commit with an
> atomic for exploitable refcount flaws. Kicking this down from
> "privilege escalation" to "DoS" is a significant change in the
> kernel's weaknesses.

The only way I see around that would be to totally get
rid of the name atomic_t, forcing people with out of
tree code to use kref_t, or whatever name we pick for
the variable type that can wrap.

Something like checkpatch or a patch checking bot
could warn whenever new code is submitted that uses
the counter type that can wrap.

Not sure whether I like my idea :)

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