security: allow using Clang's zero initialization for stack variables
In addition to -ftrivial-auto-var-init=pattern (used by
CONFIG_INIT_STACK_ALL now) Clang also supports zero initialization for
locals enabled by -ftrivial-auto-var-init=zero. The future of this flag
is still being debated (see https://bugs.llvm.org/show_bug.cgi?id=45497).
Right now it is guarded by another flag,
-enable-trivial-auto-var-init-zero-knowing-it-will-be-removed-from-clang,
which means it may not be supported by future Clang releases. Another
possible resolution is that -ftrivial-auto-var-init=zero will persist
(as certain users have already started depending on it), but the name
of the guard flag will change.
In the meantime, zero initialization has proven itself as a good
production mitigation measure against uninitialized locals. Unlike pattern
initialization, which has a higher chance of triggering existing bugs,
zero initialization provides safe defaults for strings, pointers, indexes,
and sizes. On the other hand, pattern initialization remains safer for
return values. Chrome OS and Android are moving to using zero
initialization for production builds.
Performance-wise, the difference between pattern and zero initialization
is usually negligible, although the generated code for zero
initialization is more compact.
This patch renames CONFIG_INIT_STACK_ALL to CONFIG_INIT_STACK_ALL_PATTERN
and introduces another config option, CONFIG_INIT_STACK_ALL_ZERO, that
enables zero initialization for locals if the corresponding flags are
supported by Clang.
Cc: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
Cc: Nick Desaulniers <ndesaulniers@google.com>
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Alexander Potapenko <glider@google.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20200616083435.223038-1-glider@google.com
Reviewed-by: Maciej Żenczykowski <maze@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
3 files changed