On Mon, 13 Apr 2020, Waiman Long wrote:

As said by Linus:

  A symmetric naming is only helpful if it implies symmetries in use.
  Otherwise it's actively misleading.

  In "kzalloc()", the z is meaningful and an important part of what the
  caller wants.

  In "kzfree()", the z is actively detrimental, because maybe in the
  future we really _might_ want to use that "memfill(0xdeadbeef)" or
  something. The "zero" part of the interface isn't even _relevant_.

The main reason that kzfree() exists is to clear sensitive information
that should not be leaked to other future users of the same memory
objects.

Rename kzfree() to kfree_sensitive() to follow the example of the
recently added kvfree_sensitive() and make the intention of the API
more explicit. In addition, memzero_explicit() is used to clear the
memory to make sure that it won't get optimized away by the compiler.

The renaming is done by using the command sequence:

  git grep -w --name-only kzfree |\
  xargs sed -i 's/\bkzfree\b/kfree_sensitive/'

followed by some editing of the kfree_sensitive() kerneldoc and the
use of memzero_explicit() instead of memset().

Suggested-by: Joe Perches <joe@perches.com>
Signed-off-by: Waiman Long <longman@redhat.com>

Acked-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>