Re: [PATCH] initramfs: prevent buffer overflow when unpacking torootfs

From: Andrew Morton
Date: Fri Apr 02 2010 - 17:57:45 EST


On Thu, 1 Apr 2010 12:45:46 +0300
Aaro Koskinen <aaro.koskinen@xxxxxx> wrote:

> Garbage in the initrd memory area may result in the unpack routine
> accessing memory outside the buffer. The patch adds a check that the
> specified area size is not exceeded.
>
> Signed-off-by: Aaro Koskinen <aaro.koskinen@xxxxxx>
> Cc: stable <stable@xxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
>
> The patch prevents the following kernel panic on Amstrad E3:
>
> Unpacking initramfs...
> Unable to handle kernel paging request at virtual address c20121a7
>
> ...
>
> --- a/init/initramfs.c
> +++ b/init/initramfs.c
> @@ -460,6 +460,8 @@ static char * __init unpack_to_rootfs(char *buf, unsigned len)
> }
> if (state != Reset)
> error("junk in compressed archive");
> + if (my_inptr >= len)
> + break;
> this_header = saved_offset + my_inptr;
> buf += my_inptr;
> len -= my_inptr;

OK, so if I'm understanding this right, the call to

decompress(buf, len, NULL, flush_buffer, NULL, &my_inptr, error);

has gone and generated more output data than it was asked to generate?

If so, isn't that a bug in the decompressor? Which one is your system using?

[ wonders why my_inptr is static, and why the sixth arg to decompress_fn
takes an int* while callers are passing in an unsigned* ]

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