Possible race in c4.ko

From: Anton Volkov
Date: Tue Aug 15 2017 - 09:22:26 EST


Hello.

While searching for races in the Linux kernel I've come across "drivers/isdn/hardware/avm/c4.ko" module. Here is a question that I came up with while analyzing results. Lines are given using the info from Linux v4.12.

Consider the following case:

Thread 1: Thread 2:
c4_probe
->c4_add_card
request_irq()
c4_interrupt
->c4_handle_interrupt
->c4_handle_rx
card->cardnr = ... cidx = f(card->cardnr)
(c4.c: line 1227) (c4.c: line 526)
if (cidx >= card->nlogcontr) cidx = 0;
ctrl = &card->ctrlinfo[cidx].capi_ctrl

card->cardnr is 0 until it is initialized in c4_add_card(). If at the moment of read access in c4_handle_rx() it is still 0, cidx may then be assigned an undesirable value and wrong controller may handle messages. Is this case feasible from your point of view?

Thank you for your time.

-- Anton Volkov
Linux Verification Center, ISPRAS
web: http://linuxtesting.org
e-mail: avolkov@xxxxxxxxx