Re: [PATCH v2 RESEND] m68k/kernel: array out of bound access in process_uboot_commandline

From: Hangyu Hua
Date: Mon Jan 17 2022 - 21:18:28 EST


Hi Greg,

On 2022/1/17 下午12:03, Greg Ungerer wrote:
Hi Hangyu,

On 13/1/22 11:58 am, Hangyu Hua wrote:
When the size of commandp >= size, array out of bound write occurs because
len == 0.

Signed-off-by: Hangyu Hua <hbh25y@xxxxxxxxx>
---
  arch/m68k/kernel/uboot.c | 3 ++-
  1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/arch/m68k/kernel/uboot.c b/arch/m68k/kernel/uboot.c
index 928dbd33fc4a..63eaf3c3ddcd 100644
--- a/arch/m68k/kernel/uboot.c
+++ b/arch/m68k/kernel/uboot.c
@@ -101,5 +101,6 @@ __init void process_uboot_commandline(char *commandp, int size)
      }
      parse_uboot_commandline(commandp, len);
-    commandp[len - 1] = 0;
+    if (len > 0)
+        commandp[len - 1] = 0;
  }


I am not convinced this is wrong for the reason you think it is.
Looking at the code in its entirety:

__init void process_uboot_commandline(char *commandp, int size)
{
        int len, n;

        n = strnlen(commandp, size);
        commandp += n;
        len = size - n;
        if (len) {
                /* Add the whitespace separator */
                *commandp++ = ' ';
                len--;
        }

        parse_uboot_commandline(commandp, len);
        commandp[len - 1] = 0;
}


"commandp" is moved based on the return of the strnlen(). So in the
case of commandp actually being full of valid characters (so n == size,
and thus len == 0) the commandp technically points outside of its
real size at that point. But "command[[len - 1]" would actually be
pointing to the last char in the original commandp array (so the original
commandp[size - 1]). Well at least if you are happy with the use of
negative array indexes.


You mean this is a friendly out of bound beacause "command[[len - 1]" pointing to the last char in the original commandp array. I used to think command[[len - 1] = 0 may be a zero-terminated for command. You can see my discussion with Andreas Schwab and my patch v1 in

https://lore.kernel.org/all/CAOo-nLJG71QqqD0-cJDyH0rY2VTx1eO9nHVQ5MCe8J0iiME_vw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx/

But this still be a out of bound write because "commandp" is a macro definition with a fixed size.

Clearly this could be structured better. There is no point in calling
parse_uboot_commandline() if len == 0, or even if len == 1, since you
cannot add anymore to the command line, it is full.

I think it is no point too. But the caller (setup_arch()) don't check the size of "commandp" before call parse_uboot_commandline(). Instead we do this in parse_uboot_commandline(). So it may be better to move these checks to the caller ?

Regards
Greg

Thanks for your reply
Hangyu Hua