History log of /optee_os/lib/libutils/ext/memzero_explicit.c (Results 1 – 1 of 1)
Revision Date Author Comments
# 7c8b181a 25-Feb-2019 Jerome Forissier <jerome.forissier@linaro.org>

libutils: add memzero_explicit()

Adds a new function: memzero_explicit(s, count) which is equivalent to
memset(s, 0, count) except that it cannot be optimized away by the
compiler.

memset() being a

libutils: add memzero_explicit()

Adds a new function: memzero_explicit(s, count) which is equivalent to
memset(s, 0, count) except that it cannot be optimized away by the
compiler.

memset() being a built-in function, the compiler is free to perform
optimizations such as simply discarding a call when it considers that the
call cannot have any observable effect from the program's point of view.
A typical example is clearing local data before returning from a
function. memset() is likely to have no effect in this case while
memzero_explicit() will work as expected.

Calling memset() directly from memzero_explicit() would work as long as
link time optimization (LTO) is not applied. With LTO however, the
compiler could inline the call to memzero_explicit() and find out that
dead store optimization applies. In order to avoid that, we use a method
mentioned in [1] which consists in using a volatile function pointer.
This method is considered "effective in practice" with all the commonly
used compilers.

Link: [1] https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/usenixsecurity17/sec17-yang.pdf
Signed-off-by: Jerome Forissier <jerome.forissier@linaro.org>
Reviewed-by: Jens Wiklander <jens.wiklander@linaro.org>
Reviewed-by: Joakim Bech <joakim.bech@linaro.org>

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