Re: [PATCH v3 10/10] x86-64: Add CONFIG_UNSAFE_VSYSCALLS tofeature-removal-schedule

From: Ingo Molnar
Date: Thu Jun 02 2011 - 04:10:14 EST



* Valdis.Kletnieks@xxxxxx <Valdis.Kletnieks@xxxxxx> wrote:

> On Wed, 01 Jun 2011 13:41:56 EDT, Andrew Lutomirski said:
>
> >> +         On a system with recent enough glibc (probably 2.14 or
> >> +         newer) and no static binaries, you can say N without a
> >> +         performance penalty to improve security
> >>
> >> So I checked my laptop (Fedora 16 Rawhide), and found a bunch of static binaries. The ones
> >> that look like people may care:
>
> > The binaries will still work -- they'll just take a small performance
> > hit (~220ns on Sandy Bridge) every time they call time().
>
> Ah. I misparsed the Kconfig help - I read it as "If you have no
> static binaries, setting this to N doesn't introduce a performance
> hit" (with an implied "if you have static binaries, this will hose
> you"). Adding "Static binaries will continue to work at a very
> small performance penalty" would probably help.

Yeah, would be nice to add that clarification. (or better yet,
reformulate it in a way that makes it really obvious from the get
go.)

Thanks,

Ingo
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