[PATCH 4/6] malloc: Improve free checks

Wilco Dijkstra Wilco.Dijkstra@arm.com
Mon Mar 31 12:59:42 GMT 2025


The checks on size can be merged and use __builtin_add_overflow.  Since
tcache only handles small sizes (and rejects sizes < MINSIZE), delay this
check until after tcache.

---

diff --git a/malloc/malloc.c b/malloc/malloc.c
index 24a2d50ec845d379e7eae0a2360cb669a06504ea..f8f35b337d91a0a4790d27163728fec53083f026 100644
--- a/malloc/malloc.c
+++ b/malloc/malloc.c
@@ -3465,16 +3465,8 @@ __libc_free (void *mem)
 
   INTERNAL_SIZE_T size = chunksize (p);
 
-  /* Little security check which won't hurt performance: the
-     allocator never wraps around at the end of the address space.
-     Therefore we can exclude some size values which might appear
-     here by accident or by "design" from some intruder.  */
-  if (__builtin_expect ((uintptr_t) p > (uintptr_t) -size, 0)
-      || __builtin_expect (misaligned_chunk (p), 0))
+  if (__glibc_unlikely (misaligned_chunk (p)))
     malloc_printerr ("free(): invalid pointer");
-  /* We know that each chunk is at least MINSIZE bytes.  */
-  if (__glibc_unlikely (size < MINSIZE))
-    malloc_printerr ("free(): invalid size");
 
   check_inuse_chunk (arena_for_chunk (p), p);
 
@@ -3483,6 +3475,11 @@ __libc_free (void *mem)
     return;
 #endif
 
+  /* Check size >= MINSIZE and p + size does not overflow.  */
+  if (__glibc_unlikely (__builtin_add_overflow_p ((uintptr_t) p, size - MINSIZE,
+						  (uintptr_t) 0)))
+    malloc_printerr ("free(): invalid size");
+
   _int_free_chunk (arena_for_chunk (p), p, size, 0);
 }
 libc_hidden_def (__libc_free)



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