Re: [BUG] librdmacm: Accessing out-of-bounds memory

Leon Romanovsky
2026-04-13T16:02:32Z

On Mon, Apr 13, 2026 at 06:54:32AM +0000, Korb, Andreas wrote:
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Leon Romanovsky <leon@kernel.org>
> > Sent: Sonntag, 12. April 2026 16:04
> > To: Korb, Andreas <andreas.korb@aisec.fraunhofer.de>
> > Cc: linux-rdma@vger.kernel.org
> > Subject: Re: [BUG] librdmacm: Accessing out-of-bounds memory
> >
> > On Tue, Apr 07, 2026 at 01:14:45PM +0000, Korb, Andreas wrote:
> > > The function `ds_init_ep` in librdmacm/rsocket.c may access memory via an object that is not allocated for this object.
> > >
> > > Relevant lines from this function:
> > >
> > > // (1): Prepare `struct rsocket`
> > > ds_set_qp_size(rs);
> > > // (2): Allocation
> > > rs->sbuf = calloc(rs->sq_size, RS_SNDLOWAT);
> > > // (3): Copy pointer to rs->smsg_free
> > > rs->smsg_free = (struct ds_smsg *) rs->sbuf;
> > > // (4): Copy pointer to msg
> > > msg = rs->smsg_free;
> > > // (5): Write to msg->next
> > > msg->next = NULL;
> > >
> > > Within my podman container:
> > > Before (1): rs->sq_size = rs->rq_size = 384
> > > After (1): rs->sq_size = rs->rq_size = 0
> > > Therefore, (2) does not reserve a buffer, but still returns a pointer which can be freed later, as described by man-page calloc(3p).
> > > (5) writes data to the buffer allocated in (2). If no actual buffer is allocated, it overwrites arbitrary data, yielding undefined
> > > behavior.
> > >
> > > I found it by executing /usr/bin/udpong (without any arguments) with libscudo on an arm64 server with memory tagging enabled. It
> > > immediately crashes with a segmentation fault, then. Without memory tagging, the bug stays undetected, and execution continues.
> > > The code behavior described above also happens on x86-64, there it doesn't result in a crash and is silently ignored because of the
> > > lack of MemoryTagging. Valgrind also detects this violation, however.
> > >
> > > In summary:
> > > The libc man-page states that if the allocated buffer size is 0, then either:
> > > > * A null pointer shall be returned and errno may be set to an
> > > > implementation-defined value, or
> > > > * A pointer to the allocated space shall be returned. The
> > > > application shall ensure that the pointer is not used to
> > > > access an object.
> >
> > Can you please provide a link to these sentences in the manual?
> >
> > You provided invalid value as sq_size and rq_size. It is expected that
> > library won't work after that.
> >
> > Thanks
>
> These sentences are from: https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/calloc.3p.html
>
> When the incoming values of sq_size and rq_size are wrong, that is a
> bug in udpong then. However, since librdmacm is doing the calloc allocation,
> it should still refrain from undefined behavior with the own allocated buffer.

I don't think so. This buffer is allocated in application memory, and if
the application is buggy, that is its problem, not the library's.

Thanks