Bug 4403 - strfry() gives skewed distributions
Summary: strfry() gives skewed distributions
Status: REOPENED
Alias: None
Product: glibc
Classification: Unclassified
Component: string (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
: P2 normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Not yet assigned to anyone
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2007-04-21 22:36 UTC by Aurelien Jarno
Modified: 2022-09-21 17:10 UTC (History)
7 users (show)

See Also:
Host: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
Target: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
Build: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
Last reconfirmed: 2012-05-06 00:00:00
fweimer: security-


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Description Aurelien Jarno 2007-04-21 22:36:13 UTC
strfry() tries to shuffle its string using random swaps, but it uses the
wrong strategy, and thus not all permutations are equally likely. The
code doing the shuffling itself looks like this:

  len = strlen (string);
  for (i = 0; i < len; ++i)
    {
      int32_t j;
      char c;

      __random_r (&rdata, &j);
      j %= len;

      c = string[i];
      string[i] = string[j];
      string[j] = c;
    }

In other words, for the string 'abc' j will always be between 0 and 2
(inclusive), giving the following possibilities (all equally likely):

  j0 j1 j2  result
   0  0  0  cab
   0  0  1  bca
   0  0  2  bac
   0  1  0  cba
   0  1  1  acb
   0  1  2  abc
   0  2  0  bca
   0  2  1  abc
   0  2  2  acb
   1  0  0  cba
   1  0  1  acb
   1  0  2  abc
   1  1  0  cab
   1  1  1  bca
   1  1  2  bac
   1  2  0  acb
   1  2  1  bac
   1  2  2  bca
   2  0  0  acb
   2  0  1  bac
   2  0  2  bca
   2  1  0  abc
   2  1  1  cab
   2  1  2  cba
   2  2  0  bac
   2  2  1  cba
   2  2  2  cab

Sorting and counting gives us the following distribution:

   4  abc
   5  acb
   5  bac
   5  bca
   4  cab
   4  cba

In other words, this is clearly skewed; some strings will appear 25% more often
than others.

Steinar H. Gunderson <sgunderson@bigfoot.com> proposed the following patch:

--- string/strfry.c     2007-04-21 23:12:47.000000000 +0200
+++ string/strfry.c     2007-04-21 23:22:46.000000000 +0200
@@ -38,17 +38,17 @@
     }

   len = strlen (string);
-  for (i = 0; i < len; ++i)
+  for (i = 0; i < len - 1; ++i)
     {
       int32_t j;
       char c;

       __random_r (&rdata, &j);
-      j %= len;
+      j %= (len - i);

       c = string[i];
-      string[i] = string[j];
-      string[j] = c;
+      string[i] = string[j + i];
+      string[j + i] = c;
     }

   return string;

It turns strfry() into a proper Fisher-Yates shuffle. This gives exactly
n! paths for a string with N characters, and since there are n! possible
permutations, this means a one-to-one mapping, and all possibilities are
equally likely.
Comment 1 Ulrich Drepper 2007-05-08 04:28:42 UTC
This function is a joke.  Don't you have better things to do?  It's not worth
arguing about and so to safe me time I added a modifeed versson of the patch.
Comment 2 Aurelien Jarno 2007-05-20 21:48:50 UTC
Your version is still not right, as now some strings could not appear anymore.

For example for the string "abc" the strings "abc" and "acb" could never 
appear.

The version already attached to this bug report returns all cases with a 
correct distribution.
Comment 3 Ulrich Drepper 2007-08-22 07:29:53 UTC
Stop wasting people's time!  Nobody cares about this crap.  I made a last change
but it's just too embarasing to even admit that.
Comment 4 Evan Carroll 2009-05-09 17:00:37 UTC
(In reply to comment #3)
> Stop wasting people's time!  Nobody cares about this crap.  I made a last change
> but it's just too embarasing to even admit that.

Refusing someone else's better free code without reason? You're a dick. You--
Comment 5 Petr Baudis 2009-05-10 08:03:52 UTC
Please do not reopen bugs spuriously, thank you.
Comment 6 Reuben Thomas 2010-09-16 12:05:23 UTC
This bug is apparently still not fixed. See:

http://www.eglibc.org/archives/patches/msg00646.html

which provides a patch.

Ulrich wrote, earlier in the thread:

> This function is a joke.  Don't you have better things to do?

The problem is that the function is not marked as a joke, and only its name (and
some elements of the description) is actually funny. The task that is does is
something reasonable to want to do, and it seems reasonably simple to provide a
good implementation, so why not? glibc is a high quality product, so let's make
the jokes high quality too!

If on the other hand the glibc maintainers do not consider this function to be
worth maintaining to the high standards of glibc, then please either remove it,
or remove its documentation, or mark it as "obsolete, do not use", which should
stop people both from using it and from reporting bugs.

Without any such action, it seems unreasonable to say that bug reports about
this function are wasting the maintainers' time.

memfrob is a much better example of how to make this type of joke: its much
simpler algorithm is obviously correct, as it has no statistical complexities,
and its man page explains that it's useless for encryption. Hence, no-one is
going to complain that it's bad for encryption, and no-one is going to find
implementation bugs.

In a library as high-profile and important as glibc, bad jokes are going to come
back and bite you just like other bad design decisions. If the maintainers don't
understand this, the joke, if there is one here, is very much on them.
Comment 7 My small pet dwarf 2012-03-31 21:05:54 UTC
Just a small dwarf wishing you a happy April 1st!
Comment 8 Andreas Jaeger 2012-05-06 18:56:55 UTC
Still a issue in current git.
Comment 9 Jackie Rosen 2014-02-16 19:36:32 UTC Comment hidden (spam)
Comment 10 paxdiablo 2014-06-23 03:42:34 UTC
Well, nothing in the doco (http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/strfry.html) for strfry() stated that all combinations would be equally likely. The only mention of uniform distribution was that it was used to do the swaps themselves, not that the results would be uniformly distributed.

In any case, when I make stir fry, it's rarely distributed perfectly. Having said that, Ulrich probably spent more time complaining about the patch than it would have taken to just put the damn thing in :-)

I have to go with Reuben here. If it's a joke, get rid of it, it has no place in a serious piece of software. If not, we should be willing to accept patches that make it better in some way, given any constraints from elsewhere (such as time needed by maintainers to do it).
Comment 11 Gabriel Ravier 2022-09-21 17:10:52 UTC
Isn't this fixed ? Looking at current source it appears to have a proper Fisher-Yates shuffle for strfry now