public inbox for libc-alpha@sourceware.org
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: Zack Weinberg <zackw@panix.com>
To: Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>, Florian Weimer <fweimer@redhat.com>
Cc: GNU C Library <libc-alpha@sourceware.org>,
	Carlos O'Donell <carlos@redhat.com>,
	"Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)" <mtk.manpages@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/3] explicit_bzero v5
Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2016 14:56:00 -0000	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <545c2830-c00c-7eb9-65c0-cb8042a5069d@panix.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <b3064916-a082-9bb3-8715-9252d1fdecae@cs.ucla.edu>

On 11/15/2016 02:35 PM, Paul Eggert wrote:
> On 11/15/2016 10:54 AM, Zack Weinberg wrote:
>> If the adversary can read the stack at all, I suspect they've
>> already won, no matter what we do.
> 
> That will likely be true in many applications, but not in all.

I doubt that very much.  An adversary who can read the stack has access
to at least one pointer into the executable image (i.e. a return
address) and that is sufficient to walk the entire address space,
including all static data and the complete contents of the heap.

> It's worth documenting the issue for applications that put sensitive
> objects in the heap, as they might not expose these object addresses
> to the stack now

How on earth are they to operate on sensitive objects on the heap
without holding their addresses in function-local variables, which one
must assume do from time to time get spilled onto the stack?

zw

  reply	other threads:[~2016-11-16 14:56 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 26+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2016-11-15 15:55 Zack Weinberg
2016-11-15 15:55 ` [PATCH 1/3] New string function explicit_bzero (from OpenBSD) Zack Weinberg
2016-11-15 15:55   ` [PATCH 2/3] Add fortification and inline optimization of explicit_bzero Zack Weinberg
2016-11-15 15:55     ` [PATCH 3/3] Use explicit_bzero where appropriate Zack Weinberg
2016-11-16 18:38   ` [PATCH 1/3] New string function explicit_bzero (from OpenBSD) Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)
2016-11-15 16:20 ` [PATCH 0/3] explicit_bzero v5 Paul Eggert
2016-11-15 17:46   ` Zack Weinberg
2016-11-15 18:02     ` Paul Eggert
2016-11-15 18:42       ` Florian Weimer
2016-11-15 18:54         ` Zack Weinberg
2016-11-15 19:35           ` Paul Eggert
2016-11-16 14:56             ` Zack Weinberg [this message]
2016-11-16 21:38               ` Paul Eggert
2016-11-16 18:34           ` Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)
2016-11-15 19:35         ` Paul Eggert
2016-11-16 14:58           ` Zack Weinberg
2016-11-15 21:12 ` Richard Henderson
2016-11-16 14:45   ` Zack Weinberg
2016-11-16 14:58     ` Andreas Schwab
2016-11-16 15:00       ` Zack Weinberg
2016-11-16 15:09         ` Andreas Schwab
2016-11-16 15:14           ` Zack Weinberg
2016-11-16 15:22             ` Andreas Schwab
2016-11-16 20:06     ` Richard Henderson
2016-11-16  2:03 ` Joseph Myers
2016-11-16 15:06   ` Zack Weinberg

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to=545c2830-c00c-7eb9-65c0-cb8042a5069d@panix.com \
    --to=zackw@panix.com \
    --cc=carlos@redhat.com \
    --cc=eggert@cs.ucla.edu \
    --cc=fweimer@redhat.com \
    --cc=libc-alpha@sourceware.org \
    --cc=mtk.manpages@gmail.com \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html

* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
  via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for read-only IMAP folder(s) and NNTP newsgroup(s).