Re: SLUB: sysfs lets root force slab order below required minimum, causing memory corruption

From: David Rientjes
Date: Tue Mar 03 2020 - 20:26:24 EST


On Wed, 4 Mar 2020, Jann Horn wrote:

> Hi!
>
> FYI, I noticed that if you do something like the following as root,
> the system blows up pretty quickly with error messages about stuff
> like corrupt freelist pointers because SLUB actually allows root to
> force a page order that is smaller than what is required to store a
> single object:
>
> echo 0 > /sys/kernel/slab/task_struct/order
>
> The other SLUB debugging options, like red_zone, also look kind of
> suspicious with regards to races (either racing with other writes to
> the SLUB debugging options, or with object allocations).
>

Thanks for the report, Jann. To address the most immediate issue,
allowing a smaller order than allowed, I think we'd need something like
this.

I can propose it as a formal patch if nobody has any alternate
suggestions?
---
mm/slub.c | 2 +-
1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/mm/slub.c b/mm/slub.c
--- a/mm/slub.c
+++ b/mm/slub.c
@@ -3598,7 +3598,7 @@ static int calculate_sizes(struct kmem_cache *s, int forced_order)
*/
size = ALIGN(size, s->align);
s->size = size;
- if (forced_order >= 0)
+ if (forced_order >= slab_order(size, 1, MAX_ORDER, 1))
order = forced_order;
else
order = calculate_order(size);