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Message-ID: <ZJRD9Co3XtDxeuyF@itl-email>
Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2023 08:50:42 -0400
From: Demi Marie Obenour <demi@...isiblethingslab.com>
To: Steve Grubb <sgrubb@...hat.com>, oss-security@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: Re: CVE-2023-31975: memory leak in yasm
On Wed, Jun 21, 2023 at 09:53:54PM -0400, Steve Grubb wrote:
> On Wednesday, June 21, 2023 5:54:57 PM EDT Demi Marie Obenour wrote:
> > On Thu, Jun 22, 2023 at 01:44:04AM +1000, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> > > On Wed, 21 Jun 2023, Jeffrey Walton wrote:
> > > > Memory leaks on exit are par for the course in GNU software per
> > > > https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/standards.html#Memory-Usage .
> > >
> > > Don't bother with this, don't bother with that, etc... Call me
> > > old-school (which I am), but I cannot abide sloppy programming[*].
> >
> > Memory leaks on exit are a _good_ thing in general. There is absolutely
> > zero point in calling free() if the program is about to exit — the OS
> > will do a better job of freeing resources than the program itself ever
> > could.
>
> Sure, but how can static analysis or address sanitizers tell the difference
> between something created and leaked on the error path, vs something that
> mattered during the life of the program? Meaning something leaks in an event
> loop and slowly accumulates leakage. Nothing gives you a free pass but the OS
> when analyzing leaks. Mundane leaks need cleaning up so you can find the real
> leaks that matter.
glibc exports a function for this exact purpose, and sanitizers call it
precisely to avoid false leak reports. Static analyzers can also be
told to act as if that function is called.
--
Sincerely,
Demi Marie Obenour (she/her/hers)
Invisible Things Lab
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