Thread (5 messages) 5 messages, 5 authors, 2021-08-31

Re: [PATCH] crypto: sha512: remove imaginary and mystifying clearing of variables

From: Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>
Date: 2021-08-27 08:38:55
Also in: kernel-janitors, lkml

On Sun, Aug 22, 2021 at 12:31:07PM +0200, Lukas Bulwahn wrote:
The function sha512_transform() assigns all local variables to 0 before
returning to its caller with the intent to erase sensitive data.

However, make clang-analyzer warns that all these assignments are dead
stores, and as commit 7a4295f6c9d5 ("crypto: lib/sha256 - Don't clear
temporary variables") already points out for sha256_transform():

  The assignments to clear a through h and t1/t2 are optimized out by the
  compiler because they are unused after the assignments.

  Clearing individual scalar variables is unlikely to be useful, as they
  may have been assigned to registers, and even if stack spilling was
  required, there may be compiler-generated temporaries that are
  impossible to clear in any case.

This applies here again as well. Drop meaningless clearing of local
variables and avoid this way that the code suggests that data is erased,
which simply does not happen.

Signed-off-by: Lukas Bulwahn <lukas.bulwahn@gmail.com>
---
 crypto/sha512_generic.c | 3 ---
 1 file changed, 3 deletions(-)
Patch applied.  Thanks.
-- 
Email: Herbert Xu [off-list ref]
Home Page: http://gondor.apana.org.au/~herbert/
PGP Key: http://gondor.apana.org.au/~herbert/pubkey.txt
Keyboard shortcuts
hback out one level
jnext message in thread
kprevious message in thread
ldrill in
Escclose help / fold thread tree
?toggle this help