Re: [PATCH] mm, swap: bounds check swap_info accesses to avoid NULL derefs

Dan Carpenter
2019-01-30T07:28:46Z

On Mon, Jan 14, 2019 at 07:23:05PM -0500, Daniel Jordan wrote:
> Dan Carpenter reports a potential NULL dereference in
> get_swap_page_of_type:
>
> Smatch complains that the NULL checks on "si" aren't consistent. This
> seems like a real bug because we have not ensured that the type is
> valid and so "si" can be NULL.
>
> Add the missing check for NULL, taking care to use a read barrier to
> ensure CPU1 observes CPU0's updates in the correct order:
>
> CPU0 CPU1
> alloc_swap_info() if (type >= nr_swapfiles)
> swap_info[type] = p /* handle invalid entry */
> smp_wmb() smp_rmb()
> ++nr_swapfiles p = swap_info[type]
>
> Without smp_rmb, CPU1 might observe CPU0's write to nr_swapfiles before
> CPU0's write to swap_info[type] and read NULL from swap_info[type].
>
> Ying Huang noticed that other places don't order these reads properly.
> Introduce swap_type_to_swap_info to encourage correct usage.
>
> Use READ_ONCE and WRITE_ONCE to follow the Linux Kernel Memory Model
> (see tools/memory-model/Documentation/explanation.txt).
>
> This ordering need not be enforced in places where swap_lock is held
> (e.g. si_swapinfo) because swap_lock serializes updates to nr_swapfiles
> and the swap_info array.
>
> This is a theoretical problem, no actual reports of it exist.
>
> Fixes: ec8acf20afb8 ("swap: add per-partition lock for swapfile")
> Reported-by: Dan Carpenter <dan.carpenter@oracle.com>
> Signed-off-by: Daniel Jordan <daniel.m.jordan@oracle.com>
> Cc: Alan Stern <stern@rowland.harvard.edu>
> Cc: Andi Kleen <ak@linux.intel.com>
> Cc: Andrea Parri <andrea.parri@amarulasolutions.com>
> Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
> Cc: Dan Carpenter <dan.carpenter@oracle.com>
> Cc: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com>
> Cc: Huang Ying <ying.huang@intel.com>
> Cc: Omar Sandoval <osandov@fb.com>
> Cc: Paul McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
> Cc: Peter Zijlstra (Intel) <peterz@infradead.org>
> Cc: Shaohua Li <shli@kernel.org>
> Cc: Stephen Rothwell <sfr@canb.auug.org.au>
> Cc: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>
> Cc: Will Deacon <will.deacon@arm.com>
>
> ---
>
> I'd appreciate it if someone more familiar with memory barriers could
> check this over. Thanks.
>
> Probably no need for stable, this is all theoretical.
>

The NULL dereference part is not theoretical. It require CAP_SYS_ADMIN
so it's not a huge deal, but you could trigger it from snapshot_ioctl()
with SNAPSHOT_ALLOC_SWAP_PAGE.

regards,
dan carpenter