Re: [PATCH crypto-next 07/23] block: cryptoloop: Remove VLA usage of skcipher

[Jens Axboe]

On 9/25/18 10:16 AM, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
> On Tue, 25 Sep 2018 at 18:03, Jens Axboe <axboe@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>> On 9/25/18 3:25 AM, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
>>> On Mon, 24 Sep 2018 at 19:53, Kees Cook <keescook@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Sep 24, 2018 at 4:52 AM, Ard Biesheuvel
>>>> <ard.biesheuvel@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>>> On Wed, 19 Sep 2018 at 04:11, Kees Cook <keescook@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>>>> @@ -119,7 +119,7 @@ cryptoloop_transfer(struct loop_device *lo, int cmd,
>>>>>>         unsigned in_offs, out_offs;
>>>>>>         int err;
>>>>>>
>>>>>> -       skcipher_request_set_tfm(req, tfm);
>>>>>> +       skcipher_request_set_sync_tfm(req, tfm);
>>>>>>         skcipher_request_set_callback(req, CRYPTO_TFM_REQ_MAY_SLEEP,
>>>>>>                                       NULL, NULL);
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Does this work?
>>>>
>>>> Everything is a direct wrapper for existing types and functions, so I
>>>> wouldn't expect any functional change. I haven't been able to test
>>>> this particular interface, though. cryptoloop is very deprecated,
>>>> isn't it?
>>>>
>>>
>>> Ah yes, I managed to confuse myself there. This looks all fine to me.
>>>
>>> In any case, this is another example where we may decide to fix the
>>> code rather than retain the request allocation on the stack (but that
>>> is Jens's call ultimately, I suppose)
>>>
>>> diff --git a/drivers/block/cryptoloop.c b/drivers/block/cryptoloop.c
>>> index 7033a4beda66..5ed2167219ba 100644
>>> --- a/drivers/block/cryptoloop.c
>>> +++ b/drivers/block/cryptoloop.c
>>> @@ -110,7 +110,7 @@ cryptoloop_transfer(struct loop_device *lo, int cmd,
>>>                     int size, sector_t IV)
>>>  {
>>>         struct crypto_skcipher *tfm = lo->key_data;
>>> -       SKCIPHER_REQUEST_ON_STACK(req, tfm);
>>> +       struct skcipher_request *req;
>>>         struct scatterlist sg_out;
>>>         struct scatterlist sg_in;
>>>
>>> @@ -119,7 +119,10 @@ cryptoloop_transfer(struct loop_device *lo, int cmd,
>>>         unsigned in_offs, out_offs;
>>>         int err;
>>>
>>> -       skcipher_request_set_tfm(req, tfm);
>>> +       req = skcipher_request_alloc(tfm, GFP_NOIO);
>>> +       if (!req)
>>> +               return -ENOMEM;
>>
>> Is this going to be reliable? ->transfer() is called when we're doing IO,
>> and you'd normally need a mempool backed allocation to make this safe
>> and guarantee forward progress.
>>
> 
> As far as I can tell, this function is only called from
> lo_read_transfer/lo_write_transfer, both of which do an unconditional
> alloc_page(GFP_NOIO), which is why I assumed that kmalloc(GFP_NOIO)
> would be permissible in the same context. Are you saying this may not
> be the case?

Doesn't appear to be safe for either your case, nor the page it's
allocating. If the allocator fails this allocation, then you'll get
an EIO on that request. The more likely case is the allocator taking
forever to satisfy the request, in which case you'll have very
large latencies for IO when you are close to being out of memory.
The preferred setup for allocating memory for IO is having a mempool
of at least one item. If you end up blocking for memory, you'll at
most get to wait for the existing IO that's using that memory to
complete (per waiter, of course).

-- 
Jens Axboe