Re: BUG: KCSAN: data-race in add_device_randomness+0x20d/0x290

[Jann Horn]

On Mon, Feb 7, 2022 at 10:45 PM Jann Horn <jannh@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 7, 2022 at 7:42 PM Jason A. Donenfeld <Jason@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > Thanks for the report. I assume that this is actually an old bug. Do
> > you have a vmlinux or a random.o from this kernel you could send me to
> > double check? Without that, my best guess, which I'd say I have
> > relatively high confidence about, is that the "1 byte read" is
> > actually a `movzx eax, cs:lfsr` referring to the `static u8 lfsr`
> > here, which gets inlined into add_device_randomness:
> >
> > static int crng_slow_load(const u8 *cp, size_t len)
> > {
> >     unsigned long flags;
> >     static u8 lfsr = 1;
> >
> > This was added in 2008 with dc12baacb95f ("random: use a different
> > mixing algorithm for add_device_randomness()"). My understanding is
> > that the race here isn't super problematic as we're in kind of a half
> > assed "low effort" phase anyway. But I'll give it some thought. I'm
> > CCing Jann as well who reported the original issue that motivated that
> > change.
>
> But the "lfsr" variable is never accessed outside the part of this
> method that holds a global spinlock. So that can't really be it,
> right?

There is a data race in crng_ready(), it just loads from "crng_init"
without READ_ONCE()... maybe that's what KCSAN is noticing?