Re: ASLRn't is still alive and well on x86 kernels, despite CVE-2024-26621 patch

[Florian Weimer <fweimer () redhat com>]

* David A. Wheeler:
> > The kernel should not apply hugepage optimizations to mappings created
> > with MAP_DENYWRITE.
>
> Shouldn't that be MAP_EXECUTABLE, not MAP_DENYWRITE?
> If you use MAP_DENYWRITE,
> a program that mmaps in a large non-code dataset won't have hugepage
> optimizations applied, which might be a significant performance regression.

It's just a bit that happens to be set by the glibc dynamic linker and
not much else.  The name doesn't matter at this point.

> Also, the mmap man page:
> https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/mmap.2.html says that
> MAP_EXECUTABLE and MAP_DENYWRITE are ignored.  There's a risk that
> some programs are taking that to heart & not using those flags even
> when they should. If one of those flags *will* have an effect now,
> then it'd be a good idea to document that :-).

The effect of the flag is to get back the old behavior. 8-)  It only
makes backwards compatibility better.

Thanks,
Florian