Catching memory defects in the kernel – comparisons and notes (Part 1)

As we've already mentioned in this chapter, the following table tabulates our test case results for our test runs with all the tooling technologies/kernels – vanilla/distro kernel, compiler warnings, and with KASAN and UBSAN with our debug kernel – we employed in this chapter. In effect, it's a compilation of all our findings so far in one place, thus allowing you to make quick (and hopefully helpful) comparisons:

Table 5.5 – Summary of various common memory defects and how various technologies react in catching them (or not)

Of course, the explanations of the footnotes within this table (such as [C1], [K1], [U1], and so on) can be found in the earlier relevant section.

So, here's a very brief summary:

• KASAN catches pretty much all OOB buggy memory accesses on global (static), stack local, and dynamic (slab) memory...