Re: [PATCH] information leak in sigaltstack

[Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>]

On Fri, 31 Jul 2009, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> 
> Now, you'd end up with a memset() in that case (since it certainly won't 
> match the offsetof), but my point is, the conditional really looks very 
> arbitrary and rather strange. I'd rather see it unconditional, even if it 
> costs three unnecessary writes or whatever.

.. and if we really do want the conditional, maybe just make it something 
like

	/*
	 * ss_flags is often generally 'int', and may cause
	 * holes in the structure due to alignment.
	 */
	if (alignof(oss.ss_flags) != alignof(oss))
		memset(&oss, 0, sizeof(oss));

instead? That would seem to be less subtle, and more to-the-point.

			Linus