Re: [PATCH RFC v2 0/6] Break heap spraying needed for exploiting use-after-free

[Christopher Lameter]

On Mon, 5 Oct 2020, Kees Cook wrote:

> > TYPESAFE_BY_RCU, but if forcing that on by default would enhance security
> > by a measurable amount, it wouldn't be a terribly hard sell ...
>
> Isn't the "easy" version of this already controlled by slab_merge? (i.e.
> do not share same-sized/flagged kmem_caches between different caches)

Right.

> The large trouble are the kmalloc caches, which don't have types
> associated with them. Having implicit kmem caches based on the type
> being allocated there would need some pretty extensive plumbing, I
> think?

Actually typifying those accesses may get rid of a lot of kmalloc
allocations and could help to ease the management and control of objects.

It may be a big task though given the ubiquity of kmalloc and the need to
create a massive amount of new slab caches. This is going to reduce the
cache hit rate significantly.