* [to-be-updated] ocfs2-reject-dinodes-with-non-canonical-i_mode-type-or-stray-bits.patch removed from -mm tree
@ 2026-05-19 17:41 Andrew Morton
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From: Andrew Morton @ 2026-05-19 17:41 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: mm-commits, michael.bommarito, akpm
The quilt patch titled
Subject: ocfs2: reject dinodes with non-canonical i_mode type or stray bits
has been removed from the -mm tree. Its filename was
ocfs2-reject-dinodes-with-non-canonical-i_mode-type-or-stray-bits.patch
This patch was dropped because an updated version will be issued
------------------------------------------------------
From: Michael Bommarito <michael.bommarito@gmail.com>
Subject: ocfs2: reject dinodes with non-canonical i_mode type or stray bits
Date: Sun, 17 May 2026 07:10:12 -0400
Patch series "ocfs2: harden inode validators against forged metadata".
This series adds three structural checks to ocfs2_validate_inode_block()
that catch attacker-controlled bytes in a freshly read dinode before
ocfs2_populate_inode() copies them verbatim into the in-core inode. All
three checks fire on the mount, lookup, and read-after-cache-invalidation
paths and reject the block with ocfs2_error(), the same error-propagation
mechanism the existing suballoc-slot, inline-data, chain-list, and
refcount checks use.
Direction
=========
This continues the validator-hardening direction visible in the
recent in-flight ocfs2_validate_inode_block hardening series,
e.g. ZhengYuan Huang's "ocfs2: revalidate the journal dinode
before toggling dirty"
(<20260512024115.4036371-1-gality369@gmail.com>), "ocfs2: add
extent tree depth validation"
(<20260416110229.3283682-1-gality369@gmail.com>), and "ocfs2:
add extent list validation v2"
(<20260423094116.876696-1-gality369@gmail.com>). Each of those
adds a per-field invariant check against bytes that downstream
code paths trust unconditionally.
The three checks in this series cover three more fields whose
attacker-controlled values currently propagate into VFS-visible state
without question: i_mode (type bits and reserved bits), i_rdev
(cross-checked against the file type), and the i_size / i_clusters pairing
for regular files on non-sparse volumes (patch 3 is gated on
!ocfs2_sparse_alloc(); sparse- allocation mounts legitimately commit
i_size > 0 with i_clusters == 0 via ocfs2_zero_extend()).
Threat model
============
The validator is the chokepoint that protects ocfs2_populate_inode() from
a malformed dinode whether the malformation got there via:
(1) An attacker-supplied disk image mounted by a privileged
user. The mount path runs every dinode through this
validator before any unprivileged user opens a file on
the volume. This is the same threat model the existing
inline-data, refcount, and chain-list checks in this
function were written for.
(2) A compromised cluster peer with raw write access to the
shared block device. OCFS2 is a clustered filesystem;
the on-disk blocks behind bh->b_data live on shared
storage that other cluster nodes can write. The local
node's cache-eviction re-read runs the newly fetched
block through this validator before ocfs2_populate_inode()
runs again. Oracle's BlockErrorDetection design document
scopes the existing CRC32 + Hamming integrity primitive
explicitly as defense against memory and wire corruption,
not as authentication of peer writes; the field-level
validators are therefore the kernel-side defense
whichever path produced the forged block.
The three checks in this series are deliberately structural: they each
express an invariant mkfs.ocfs2 and the kernel maintain unconditionally,
and they reject any dinode whose header violates that invariant before its
bytes propagate to the in-core inode.
Scope note: these checks block forge patterns that touch i_mode (outside
the canonical envelope), i_rdev (on a non-device file), or the i_size /
i_clusters pair (regular file with size but no extents, on non-sparse
volumes only). A forger who keeps the dinode within these structural
envelopes (for example, flipping only the permission bits and uid/gid on a
regular file that already has clusters allocated) can still produce a
dinode that satisfies the field-level invariants; closing that residual
class is outside the scope of this hardening series.
Validation
==========
Each patch builds on top of the previous one against mainline; the series
as a whole builds clean against v7.1-rc1 with zero new warnings.
checkpatch --strict reports 0 errors, 0 warnings, 0 checks for each patch.
The series was exercised on a two-node QEMU cluster (virtio-blk
shared LUN with share-rw=on, both nodes joining the same o2cb
cluster, mounted ocfs2 with metaecc):
- Pre-series baseline: a peer-node raw-write forge that adds
S_ISUID and flips uid/gid to 0 on a regular file is accepted
by the existing validator chain; the unprivileged user on
the victim node exec()s the file and gains euid=0. This
confirms the cluster-peer write primitive is reachable in
today's mainline. Per the Scope note above, this particular
forge stays within the structural envelope these patches
enforce and is NOT blocked by them; closing it requires the
out-of-scope keyed-integrity work.
- Post-series, structural-variant forge: a peer-node forge
that, in addition to the setuid + uid/gid changes, stores
i_rdev = MKDEV(1,1) on the same regular-file dinode (the
cleanest cluster-context attacker primitive patch 2
catches) is rejected by ocfs2_validate_inode_block() with
ocfs2_error "non-device mode 0104755 with i_rdev N". The
buffer-head propagates -EFSCORRUPTED to
ocfs2_read_locked_inode and the user-visible result is
Permission denied on subsequent stat / open / exec of the
forged file. Analogous post-series forge variants that
flip i_mode outside the canonical envelope, or that set
i_size > 0 with i_clusters == 0 on a non-inline regular
file mounted from a non-sparse volume, are rejected by
patches 1 and 3 respectively.
A separate cluster regression (mount, peer-write a regular file,
drop_caches on the second node, read it back) runs clean post-series, so
the checks do not regress normal operation.
In-tree selftests under tools/testing/selftests/ that reference
fs/ocfs2/inode.c or any changed symbol were checked; no matching selftests
exist for ocfs2_validate_inode_block(), which is consistent with OCFS2
having no in-tree selftest coverage. The subsystem's standard regression
coverage is xfstests (the generic fs group) plus ocfs2-test, both out of
tree. Those were not run as part of this series; a full xfstests pass
before merge is recommended and I am happy to run a representative subset
and report results if reviewers would find it useful.
This patch (of 3):
ocfs2_validate_inode_block() currently accepts any 16-bit i_mode value as
long as i_mode is non-zero. ocfs2_populate_inode() then copies that mode
verbatim into inode->i_mode and dispatches on i_mode & S_IFMT to the
file/dir/symlink/special_file iops; any unrecognised type falls through to
ocfs2_special_file_iops and init_special_inode(), which interprets
id1.dev1.i_rdev as a device number.
The result is that anything able to forge or corrupt an inode block (a
hostile cluster peer with raw write access to the shared LUN, a privileged
user mounting an attacker-supplied image, on-disk corruption) can publish
an in-core inode whose type bits do not name a POSIX file type, or whose
permission bits carry bytes outside S_IFMT|07777. Both shapes propagate
into VFS-visible state that downstream code paths assume is well-formed.
Reject early in the validator:
- mode bits outside S_IFMT|07777
- S_IFMT values that are not one of S_IFREG, S_IFDIR, S_IFLNK,
S_IFCHR, S_IFBLK, S_IFIFO, S_IFSOCK
mkfs.ocfs2 and the kernel only ever produce these seven types plus the
standard permission, setuid/setgid/sticky bits; an on-disk i_mode outside
this envelope is structurally malformed regardless of how it got there.
Validated against the existing inline_data, refcount, and chain-list
checks: this hardening fires before any of them and does not perturb their
behaviour for well-formed inodes.
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/20260517111015.3187935-1-michael.bommarito@gmail.com
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/20260517111015.3187935-2-michael.bommarito@gmail.com
Fixes: b657c95c1108 ("ocfs2: Wrap inode block reads in a dedicated function.")
Signed-off-by: Michael Bommarito <michael.bommarito@gmail.com>
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-4-7
Reviewed-by: Joseph Qi <joseph.qi@linux.alibaba.com>
Cc: Changwei Ge <gechangwei@live.cn>
Cc: Heming Zhao <heming.zhao@suse.com>
Cc: Joel Becker <jlbec@evilplan.org>
Cc: Jun Piao <piaojun@huawei.com>
Cc: Junxiao Bi <junxiao.bi@oracle.com>
Cc: Mark Fasheh <mark@fasheh.com>
Cc: <stable@vger.kernel.org>b
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
---
fs/ocfs2/inode.c | 39 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1 file changed, 39 insertions(+)
--- a/fs/ocfs2/inode.c~ocfs2-reject-dinodes-with-non-canonical-i_mode-type-or-stray-bits
+++ a/fs/ocfs2/inode.c
@@ -1494,6 +1494,45 @@ int ocfs2_validate_inode_block(struct su
goto bail;
}
+ /*
+ * Reject dinodes whose i_mode does not name one of the seven
+ * canonical POSIX file types, or whose mode carries bits outside
+ * S_IFMT | 07777. ocfs2_populate_inode() copies i_mode verbatim
+ * into inode->i_mode and then dispatches via switch (mode & S_IFMT)
+ * to file/dir/symlink/special_file iops; an unrecognised type
+ * falls into ocfs2_special_file_iops with init_special_inode(),
+ * which interprets i_rdev. Constrain the type byte here so the
+ * dispatch only ever sees a value mkfs.ocfs2 / VFS can produce.
+ */
+ {
+ u16 mode = le16_to_cpu(di->i_mode);
+
+ if (mode & ~(S_IFMT | 07777)) {
+ rc = ocfs2_error(sb,
+ "Invalid dinode #%llu: mode 0%o has bits outside S_IFMT|07777\n",
+ (unsigned long long)bh->b_blocknr,
+ mode);
+ goto bail;
+ }
+
+ switch (mode & S_IFMT) {
+ case S_IFREG:
+ case S_IFDIR:
+ case S_IFLNK:
+ case S_IFCHR:
+ case S_IFBLK:
+ case S_IFIFO:
+ case S_IFSOCK:
+ break;
+ default:
+ rc = ocfs2_error(sb,
+ "Invalid dinode #%llu: mode 0%o has unknown file type\n",
+ (unsigned long long)bh->b_blocknr,
+ mode);
+ goto bail;
+ }
+ }
+
if (le16_to_cpu(di->i_dyn_features) & OCFS2_INLINE_DATA_FL) {
struct ocfs2_inline_data *data = &di->id2.i_data;
_
Patches currently in -mm which might be from michael.bommarito@gmail.com are
ocfs2-reject-dinodes-whose-i_rdev-disagrees-with-the-file-type.patch
ocfs2-reject-regular-files-with-non-zero-i_size-and-zero-i_clusters.patch
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2026-05-19 17:41 [to-be-updated] ocfs2-reject-dinodes-with-non-canonical-i_mode-type-or-stray-bits.patch removed from -mm tree Andrew Morton
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