Re: [PATCH 1/2] cfi: add CONFIG_CFI_ICALL_NORMALIZE_INTEGERS

From: Alice Ryhl
Date: Tue Jul 30 2024 - 12:13:37 EST


On Tue, Jul 30, 2024 at 12:29 PM Peter Zijlstra <peterz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Jul 30, 2024 at 09:40:11AM +0000, Alice Ryhl wrote:
> > Introduce a Kconfig option for enabling the experimental option to
> > normalize integer types. This ensures that integer types of the same
> > size and signedness are considered compatible by the Control Flow
> > Integrity sanitizer.
> >
> > This option exists for compatibility with Rust, as C and Rust do not
> > have the same set of integer types. There are cases where C has two
> > different integer types of the same size and alignment, but Rust only
> > has one integer type of that size and alignment. When Rust calls into
> > C functions using such types in their signature, this results in CFI
> > failures.
> >
> > This patch introduces a dedicated option for this because it is
> > undesirable to have CONFIG_RUST affect CC_FLAGS in this way.
>
> To be clear, any code compiled with this is incompatible with code
> compiled without this, as the function signatures will differ, right?

That's correct.

> Specifically, it will map things like 'unsigned long long' and 'unsigned
> long' -- which are both u64 on LP64 targets to the same 'type', right?

That's correct.

> I suppose it has been decided the security impact of this change is
> minimal?

Yeah, see Sami's response.

> All in all, there is very little actual information provided here.

I'll make sure to include this info in the commit message of v2.

Alice