diff options
author | Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net> | 2008-02-11 16:17:33 -0700 |
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committer | Linus Torvalds <torvalds@woody.linux-foundation.org> | 2008-02-11 20:44:44 -0800 |
commit | 900cf086fd2fbad07f72f4575449e0d0958f860f (patch) | |
tree | 9d48ca4463111c074ea8688fd8041115387156e1 /lib | |
parent | b1292b17dc03fcd90f3301974cea1b7c61371ba5 (diff) |
Be more robust about bad arguments in get_user_pages()
So I spent a while pounding my head against my monitor trying to figure
out the vmsplice() vulnerability - how could a failure to check for
*read* access turn into a root exploit? It turns out that it's a buffer
overflow problem which is made easy by the way get_user_pages() is
coded.
In particular, "len" is a signed int, and it is only checked at the
*end* of a do {} while() loop. So, if it is passed in as zero, the loop
will execute once and decrement len to -1. At that point, the loop will
proceed until the next invalid address is found; in the process, it will
likely overflow the pages array passed in to get_user_pages().
I think that, if get_user_pages() has been asked to grab zero pages,
that's what it should do. Thus this patch; it is, among other things,
enough to block the (already fixed) root exploit and any others which
might be lurking in similar code. I also think that the number of pages
should be unsigned, but changing the prototype of this function probably
requires some more careful review.
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'lib')
0 files changed, 0 insertions, 0 deletions