Re: [PATCH] serial: 8250: use initializer instead of memset to clear local struct

[Masahiro Yamada]

Hi Greg,


2016-12-23 16:20 GMT+09:00 Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> On Fri, Dec 23, 2016 at 12:21:48PM +0900, Masahiro Yamada wrote:
>> Leave the way of zero-out to the compiler's decision; the compiler
>> may know a more optimized way than calling memset().
>
> But no, it doesn't, it will leave "blank" areas in the structure with
> bad data in it, which is why we do memset.  See the tree-wide fixups we
> made about a year ago for this very issue.  Are you sure none of these
> structures get copied to userspace?

I have to admit no security consideration was in my mind.

If we talk about the particular case of struct uart_8250_port,
this structure is allocated in the stack temporarily,
then serial8250_register_8250_port() copies its members to another
structure one by one.  So no "blank" area is exposed to the user-space,
I think.

Having said that, we have no good reason to take a risk for this.

So, please feel free to discard this patch.


-- 
Best Regards
Masahiro Yamada