Re: [PATCH] kmsg: limit message size

From: Andrew Morton
Date: Tue May 08 2012 - 18:57:23 EST


On Sat, 5 May 2012 16:56:12 +0200
Sasha Levin <levinsasha928@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> There are no size checks in kmsg_write(), and we try allocating enough
> memory to store everything userspace gave us, which may be too much for
> kmalloc to allocate.
>
> Furthermore, we can have an integer overflow if len==INT_MAX, in that case
> we'll corrupt kernel memory.
>
> This was tested with several userspace programs that write to kmsg, and haven't
> found a case where the program attempts to write more than PAGE_SIZE.
>
> Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin <levinsasha928@xxxxxxxxx>
> ---
> drivers/char/mem.c | 3 +++
> 1 files changed, 3 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/drivers/char/mem.c b/drivers/char/mem.c
> index d6e9d08..c90964b 100644
> --- a/drivers/char/mem.c
> +++ b/drivers/char/mem.c
> @@ -815,6 +815,9 @@ static ssize_t kmsg_writev(struct kiocb *iocb, const struct iovec *iv,
> ssize_t ret = -EFAULT;
> size_t len = iov_length(iv, count);
>
> + if (len > PAGE_SIZE)
> + return -E2BIG;
> +
> line = kmalloc(len + 1, GFP_KERNEL);
> if (line == NULL)
> return -ENOMEM;

Well, this is a write(), and write() is permitted to return
less-than-asked-for. So what we could do here is to write the first N
bytes and then return N to userspace. Well-behaved userspace will
notice this and then do some more writing from offset N.

Could I ask that you try this and test it a bit, see whether there is
any well-behaved userspace out there? Things like cat and echo
_should_ dtrt.

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