From: Fabrice Derepas <fabrice.derepas@canonical.com>
To: John Johansen <john.johansen@canonical.com>
Cc: Fabrice Derepas <fabrice.derepas@canonical.com>,
apparmor@lists.ubuntu.com, linux-security-module@vger.kernel.org
Subject: [PATCH] apparmor: fix integer overflow in verify_tags() bounds check
Date: Sun, 9 Aug 2026 16:29:45 +0200 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20260809142947.548440-1-fabrice.derepas@canonical.com> (raw)
verify_tags() validates the tagset table unpacked from a policy blob.
For each set it reads a count and checks that advancing the index by
that count stays inside sets.table[]:
u32 cnt = tags->sets.table[i];
if (i+cnt >= tags->sets.size) {
i, cnt and sets.size are all u32, so i+cnt is evaluated modulo 2^32.
sets.table[] is filled by unpack_tagsets() with aa_unpack_u32(), so
every entry is a raw unbounded 32-bit word taken from the policy blob,
and verify_tags() is the function that is supposed to validate it. A
count close to U32_MAX makes the sum wrap to a small value, the guard
passes, and the inner loop then walks sets.table[++i] past the end of
the kcalloc(size, sizeof(u32)) allocation.
Note that sets.size is bounded by 65535, because unpack_tagsets() reads
it with aa_unpack_array() as a u16, so the wrap cannot be reached by
growing the table; it is reached purely through the attacker-supplied
count.
With sets.size = 2 and sets.table = { 0, 0xffffffff }:
i = 0: cnt = 0, guard 0 + 0 >= 2 is false, inner loop does not run
i = 1: cnt = 0xffffffff, guard (1 + 0xffffffff) mod 2^32 == 0 >= 2 is
false, so the guard is bypassed and the inner loop reads
sets.table[2] -- one element past a two element allocation
The walk continues until an out-of-bounds value happens to be >=
hdrs.size or the access faults, so a crafted policy yields an
out-of-bounds read on the policy load path
(aa_replace_profiles -> aa_unpack -> unpack_policydb -> unpack_tags ->
verify_tags). unpack_tags() runs before the perms and DFA tables are
unpacked, so no other table needs to be well formed to reach it.
Policy load is gated by aa_may_manage_policy(), which checks
CAP_MAC_ADMIN relative to the subject's own user namespace rather than
the init user namespace, so with the default
unprivileged_userns_apparmor_policy=1 the path is reachable from an
unprivileged task in a matched-level nested namespace, not only by a
globally privileged one.
Perform the addition in u64 so that it cannot wrap, restoring the
intended i + cnt < sets.size guarantee.
Fixes: 3d28e2397af7 ("apparmor: add support loading per permission tagging")
Signed-off-by: Fabrice Derepas <fabrice.derepas@canonical.com>
---
security/apparmor/policy_unpack.c | 2 +-
1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
diff --git a/security/apparmor/policy_unpack.c b/security/apparmor/policy_unpack.c
index d9dcff1..15b5e92 100644
--- a/security/apparmor/policy_unpack.c
+++ b/security/apparmor/policy_unpack.c
@@ -730,7 +730,7 @@ static bool verify_tags(struct aa_tags_struct *tags, const char **info)
/* count followed by count indexes into hdrs */
u32 cnt = tags->sets.table[i];
- if (i+cnt >= tags->sets.size) {
+ if ((u64)i + cnt >= tags->sets.size) {
AA_DEBUG(DEBUG_UNPACK,
"tagset too large %d+%d > sets.table[%d]",
i, cnt, tags->sets.size);
--
2.43.0
next reply other threads:[~2026-08-09 14:30 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 3+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2026-08-09 14:29 Fabrice Derepas [this message]
2026-08-10 7:25 ` [PATCH] apparmor: fix integer overflow in verify_tags() bounds check John Johansen
2026-08-10 7:26 ` John Johansen
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