Re: [PATCH] i2c: smbus: fix NULL function pointer dereference

Jean Delvare
2024-05-30T13:25:04Z

Hi Wolfram, Baruch, Peter,

On Fri, 2024-04-26 at 08:44 +0200, Wolfram Sang wrote:
> Brauch reported an OOPS when using the designware controller as target
> only. Target-only modes break the assumption of one transfer function
> always being available. Fix this by always checking the pointer in
> __i2c_transfer.

I was asked to backport this fix to our oldest kernel branches, so I
looked into it and I have comments and a question.

> Reported-by: Baruch Siach <baruch@tkos.co.il>
> Closes: https://lore.kernel.org/r/4269631780e5ba789cf1ae391eec1b959def7d99.1712761976.git.baruch@tkos.co.il
> Fixes: 4b1acc43331d ("i2c: core changes for slave support")

I have a hard time establishing a formal link between the reported bug
and the commit listed above. I do understand that it wouldn't make
sense to register an i2c_adapter with neither .master_xfer nor
.smbus_xfer set before .reg_slave was added to struct i2c_algorithm,
but there were no checks in i2c-core preventing it from happening.

It was also possible for any (broken) device driver to call
__i2c_transfer() without first checking if plain I2C transfers were
actually supported by the i2c_adapter. I would argue that such an issue
should have been fixed at the device driver level by checking for the
I2C_FUNC_I2C functionality flag before calling __i2c_transfer(). That's
a theoretical issue though as I'm not aware of any device driver having
this issue.

The call stack in Baruch's report shows that the real issue is with
i2c_smbus_xfer_emulated() being called with the i2c bus lock already
held, and thus having to call __i2c_transfer() instead of
i2c_transfer(). This code path did not exist before commit 63453b59e411
("i2c: smbus: add unlocked __i2c_smbus_xfer variant"), which was added
in kernel v4.19. Therefore I claim that CVE-2024-35984 only affects
kernel v4.19 and newer. Do we agree on that?

> Signed-off-by: Wolfram Sang <wsa+renesas@sang-engineering.com>
> ---
>  drivers/i2c/i2c-core-base.c  | 12 ++++++------
>  drivers/i2c/i2c-core-smbus.c |  2 +-
>  2 files changed, 7 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/drivers/i2c/i2c-core-base.c b/drivers/i2c/i2c-core-base.c
> index ff5c486a1dbb..db0d1ac82910 100644
> --- a/drivers/i2c/i2c-core-base.c
> +++ b/drivers/i2c/i2c-core-base.c
> @@ -2200,13 +2200,18 @@ static int i2c_check_for_quirks(struct i2c_adapter *adap, struct i2c_msg *msgs,
>   * Returns negative errno, else the number of messages executed.
>   *
>   * Adapter lock must be held when calling this function. No debug logging
> - * takes place. adap->algo->master_xfer existence isn't checked.
> + * takes place.
>   */
>  int __i2c_transfer(struct i2c_adapter *adap, struct i2c_msg *msgs, int num)
>  {
>         unsigned long orig_jiffies;
>         int ret, try;
>
> +       if (!adap->algo->master_xfer) {
> +               dev_dbg(&adap->dev, "I2C level transfers not supported\n");
> +               return -EOPNOTSUPP;
> +       }
> +

Not related specifically to this commit, as it is only moving a check
which already existed before, but this looks inefficient to me.

We end up performing the check with every I2C-level transfer, while the
availability of such support can almost always be checked once and for
all in the I2C device driver (i2c-dev and i2c_smbus_xfer_emulated being
the exceptions).

I see two ways for us to reach this check:
* __i2c_transfer() or i2c_transfer() gets called directly by a device
driver. This driver should have checked for the I2C_FUNC_I2C
functionality flag before calling either function. If they did not,
it's a driver bug, which should be fixed in the driver in question.
Note that i2c-dev currently lacks this check, I think it should be
added.
* __i2c_transfer() gets called by i2c_smbus_xfer_emulated(). We should
add a check for I2C_FUNC_I2C in __i2c_smbus_xfer() before calling this
function. This is more or less what Baruch proposed initially, and I
think it would have been a more efficient fix.

And if you are concerned about functionality flags not being set
properly (specifically I2C_FUNC_I2C being set while .master_xfer isn't
set [1]) then we should add a consistency check at i2c_adapter
registration time, so again it's done once and for all and we don't
have to check again and again at transfer time.

Or is this optimization not worth it?

[1] BTW, looking at the only two in-tree slave-only I2C adapter
drivers, i2c-at91-slave and i2c-designware-slave, both are setting
functionality flags other than I2C_FUNC_SLAVE. Unless I don't
understand how the slave functionality works, this is a bug. I'll
prepare and post patches later today.

--
Jean Delvare
SUSE L3 Support