RFC: malloc and secure memory.

[Stefan O'Rear]

On Thu, Sep 24, 2020, at 4:56 PM, Carlos O'Donell via Libc-alpha wrote:
> In reviewing this discussion:
> https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/14213
> 
> The request is for a way to mark some allocations as "secure"
> and to give them special properties.
> 
> I wonder if we can't do this in some generic way:
> 
> - Make arenas a first class construct.
> 
> /* Get arena with special properties.  */
> malloc_arena *secure_arena = NULL;
> /* Get a handle to an arena that has secure heaps.  If glibc can make this
>    kind of arena and heap then it does, otherwise it returns NULL.  */
> secure_arena = malloc_arena_get (HEAP_SECURE);
> /* Does this glibc support his kind of arena?  */
> if (secure_arena == NULL)
>   abort();

This is a bit late and I apologize, but is there any possibility of choosing
a more descriptive name than SECURE for this?  It's extremely vague, will mean
something different for everybody, and because security is a situational and 
global property of systems, I would generally consider it incorrect to use
"secure" to describe local and binary properties of subsystems.

-s