Skip to content
Commit f0907827 authored by Rasmus Villemoes's avatar Rasmus Villemoes Committed by Kees Cook
Browse files

compiler.h: enable builtin overflow checkers and add fallback code

This adds wrappers for the __builtin overflow checkers present in gcc
5.1+ as well as fallback implementations for earlier compilers. It's not
that easy to implement the fully generic __builtin_X_overflow(T1 a, T2
b, T3 *d) in macros, so the fallback code assumes that T1, T2 and T3 are
the same. We obviously don't want the wrappers to have different
semantics depending on $GCC_VERSION, so we also insist on that even when
using the builtins.

There are a few problems with the 'a+b < a' idiom for checking for
overflow: For signed types, it relies on undefined behaviour and is
not actually complete (it doesn't check underflow;
e.g. INT_MIN+INT_MIN == 0 isn't caught). Due to type promotion it
is wrong for all types (signed and unsigned) narrower than
int. Similarly, when a and b does not have the same type, there are
subtle cases like

  u32 a;

  if (a + sizeof(foo) < a)
    return -EOVERFLOW;
  a += sizeof(foo);

where the test is always false on 64 bit platforms. Add to that that it
is not always possible to determine the types involved at a glance.

The new overflow.h is somewhat bulky, but that's mostly a result of
trying to be type-generic, complete (e.g. catching not only overflow
but also signed underflow) and not relying on undefined behaviour.

Linus is of course right [1] that for unsigned subtraction a-b, the
right way to check for overflow (underflow) is "b > a" and not
"__builtin_sub_overflow(a, b, &d)", but that's just one out of six cases
covered here, and included mostly for completeness.

So is it worth it? I think it is, if nothing else for the documentation
value of seeing

  if (check_add_overflow(a, b, &d))
    return -EGOAWAY;
  do_stuff_with(d);

instead of the open-coded (and possibly wrong and/or incomplete and/or
UBsan-tickling)

  if (a+b < a)
    return -EGOAWAY;
  do_stuff_with(a+b);

While gcc does recognize the 'a+b < a' idiom for testing unsigned add
overflow, it doesn't do nearly as good for unsigned multiplication
(there's also no single well-established idiom). So using
check_mul_overflow in kcalloc and friends may also make gcc generate
slightly better code.

[1] https://lkml.org/lkml/2015/11/2/658



Signed-off-by: default avatarRasmus Villemoes <linux@rasmusvillemoes.dk>
Signed-off-by: default avatarKees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
parent 75bc37fe
0% or .
You are about to add 0 people to the discussion. Proceed with caution.
Finish editing this message first!
Please register or to comment