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Windows 10 works incorrectly with Large memory pages

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Re: Windows 10 works incorrectly with Large memory pages

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your wish is granted? https://www.cvedetails.com/cve/CVE-2016-2334/ I mean, there are easy databases to look for these sorts of questions...

Looks like that exploit will not work on x64 builds (the only thing anyone should be running in 2018) due to DEP

https://twitter.com/wdormann/status/955802146045353985

DEP would be nice, wouldn't it?

IIRC, Igor finally added DEP a few months ago (NXCOMPAT if you need to google the Internet Drama). But the fact that he was running this code without lol DEP until January of THIS YEAR makes me suspect his coding practices.

As per this other page:

https://landave.io/2018/01/7-zip-multiple-memory-corruptions...

> I have discussed this issue with Igor Pavlov and tried to convince him to enable all three flags. However, he refused to enable /DYNAMICBASE because he prefers to ship the binaries without relocation table to achieve a minimal binary size. Moreover, he doesn’t want to enable /GS, because it could affect the runtime as well as the binary size. At least he will try to enable /NXCOMPAT for the next release. Apparently, it is currently not enabled because 7-Zip is linked with an obsolete linker that doesn’t support the flag.

This is bad. Very very bad. This should not have been happening in 2018. He wants to save literally ~kilobytes of .exe space instead of use ASLR. Igor is not someone who seems to take security seriously.

----------------------

In any case, there are ways around DEP. Which is why ASLR exists, and other such flags. Enabling DEP brings 7-zip into the year 2003 (when x86-64 was first released by AMD) level of security, but there are other security threats that are addressed with these other compiler flags.

Re: Windows 10 works incorrectly with Large memory pages

#82
post #2

For all the improvements to Windows that have come from Microsoft thanks Nadella & co., it is still rather shocking to realize Windows has no public bug tracker, and no real way to report these issues besides screaming loudly and hoping someone in Redmond hears you. It's even worse customer service than Google, which is quite an achievement.

Is it a brand/PR thing that having a bug tracker means admitting that there are bugs ? Microsoft tends to use github issues as a tracker for some projects even though they don't put code on github (WSL for example). So why not do it for windows ?

Re: Windows 10 works incorrectly with Large memory pages

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like that exploit will not work on x64 builds (the only thing anyone should be running in 2018) due to DEP

https://twitter.com/wdormann/status/955802146045353985 DEP would be nice, wouldn't it? IIRC, Igor finally added DEP a few months ago (NXCOMPAT if you need to google the Internet Drama). But the fact that he was running this code without lol DEP until January of THIS YEAR makes me suspect his coding practices. As per this other page: https://landave.io/2018/01/7-zip-multiple-memory-corruptions... > I have discussed th…

> Igor is not someone who seems to take security seriously.

On this we agree. The question is, how seriously does security deserve to be taken in this case?

The evidence suggests not very seriously at all. As horrifically insecure as 7z is by your metrics, I can't think of a single incident of it ever ruining anyone's day, unlike a lot of modern software that manages to do that while supposedly being "secure" and functioning "correctly".

Re: Windows 10 works incorrectly with Large memory pages

#84
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Api abuse should not lead to system crashes or global memory corruption.

Excuse me what? That's how pretty much all non-managed APIs work

It certainly is an OS bug. The OS is modifying your memory behind your back after it has given it to you. That can break any application, managed or otherwise.

Re: Windows 10 works incorrectly with Large memory pages

#85

So, as much as I hate to hate on somebody here, Igor is... somewhat unreliable with regards to these issues. Igor is infamous for disabling virtually every setting. 7-Zip has no ASLR, compiler-stack checks, or anything what-so-ever. Igor refuses to use a modern VC++ (Visual Studio 2015 and later have FREE versions available for open-source code) that would solve a lot of security issues and bugs. I'm not entirely sur…

You're criticizing him for disabling performance-lowering features for a software program that lives and dies in reviews by its performance?

And what does "anything what-so-ever" mean? If he does static analysis on the code and runtime analysis (e.g. the valgrind type), I don't expect that Microsoft's runtime checking will do much more in practice.

None of what you point out really speaks about the quality of his code. Does he have a history of security issues and bugs that's significantly different from others?

Re: Windows 10 works incorrectly with Large memory pages

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well then I'll report something about how my PC refuses to stay asleep after I tell it to sleep.

My screen keeps on coming back on rather than turning off. Got any leads on that?

Did you enable Windows Hello?

Re: Windows 10 works incorrectly with Large memory pages

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've dug into it several times. First it was network adapter, which for some reason had a default setting to wake on any received packet (lol, wut?). Then it was waking because there was some setting deep in the system about waking up for scheduled operations. (not scheduled tasks, but timers within individual processes... why???) Now it started again but this time the power management tools report no reason for the…

Do you have a Display port monitor, by any chance? After adding one, I found out that when the display goes to sleep, Windows sees it as a disconnection, and 'helpfully' wakes up to reorganize all the windows onto one display. That wakes up the Display port monitor, which triggers another reorganization, and the cycle begins again.

So that's what it is. Got a TV connected via a D-port to HDMI adapter and the stupid machine wakes when I want to just turn off the TV after I put the PC to sleep.

Googling didn't get me too far obviously.

Re: Windows 10 works incorrectly with Large memory pages

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Microsoft employee, I can say that that feedback is taken pretty seriously in most teams, especially if the description is good or if the problem recorder/screenshot tool is used. It's not all based on up votes.

This doesn't look like a bug tracker, this looks more like a forum overrun by an angry mob. https://i.imgur.com/mUkcQh5.png

So a typical large bug tracker.

Re: Windows 10 works incorrectly with Large memory pages

#89
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't look like a bug tracker, this looks more like a forum overrun by an angry mob. https://i.imgur.com/mUkcQh5.png

So a typical large bug tracker.

A typical unmaintained bug tracker.

An opposite case: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/list

Re: Windows 10 works incorrectly with Large memory pages

#90
post #85

So, as much as I hate to hate on somebody here, Igor is... somewhat unreliable with regards to these issues. Igor is infamous for disabling virtually every setting. 7-Zip has no ASLR, compiler-stack checks, or anything what-so-ever. Igor refuses to use a modern VC++ (Visual Studio 2015 and later have FREE versions available for open-source code) that would solve a lot of security issues and bugs. I'm not entirely sur…

You're criticizing him for disabling performance-lowering features for a software program that lives and dies in reviews by its performance? And what does "anything what-so-ever" mean? If he does static analysis on the code and runtime analysis (e.g. the valgrind type), I don't expect that Microsoft's runtime checking will do much more in practice. None of what you point out really speaks about the quality of his cod…

> You're criticizing him for disabling performance-lowering features for a software program that lives and dies in reviews by its performance?

Oh come on. The Linux Kernel also "lives and dies" based on its performance. Despite being one of the highest performance codebases ever written, Linux is still ASLR'd, Meltdown-patched, TLB-flushed and Reptoline-protected to all hell to mitigate against theoretical threats.

Web Browsers also live and die by performance numbers. Look at all of those Javascript benchmarks and shootouts that happen. And yet, web browsers are also taking advantage of the latest and greatest security features available on any OS they're deployed on.

Because security matters. And often, it matters more than performance.

7-Zip's DLLs / code are used as plugins everywhere. Not just in Windows 7z.exe, but also on Fedora Core, Ubuntu Linux, and more. There comes a point where we as a community have to recognize that security matters more than performance.

In most cases, there's a happy medium. I'm not necessarily saying that 7z needs to sandbox itself like Chrome, or needs to spin itself into a VM and isolate itself like MS Edge App Guard. Nor does it need to be Spectre-hardened with reptolines like the Linux kernel. All I'm saying that 7z should at least be compiled with the freaking DEP / NX flag and ASLR. Neither of these have major performance flaws and have HUGE security benefits. Is that seriously too much to ask?

Besides, ASLR + DEP/NX flags are the default compile option flags for the last 15 years. Most software uses these flags with no issues.

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