From: John Johansen <john.johansen@canonical.com>
To: Fabrice Derepas <fabrice.derepas@canonical.com>
Cc: apparmor@lists.ubuntu.com, linux-security-module@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] apparmor: fix integer overflow in verify_tags() bounds check
Date: Mon, 10 Aug 2026 00:26:10 -0700 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <2e0e97cf-4aad-421c-b5f3-9f24409d68fa@canonical.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20260809142947.548440-1-fabrice.derepas@canonical.com>
On 8/9/26 07:29, Fabrice Derepas wrote:
> 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>
I have pulled this into the apparmor tree
> ---
> 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);
prev parent reply other threads:[~2026-08-10 7:26 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 3+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2026-08-09 14:29 [PATCH] apparmor: fix integer overflow in verify_tags() bounds check Fabrice Derepas
2026-08-10 7:25 ` John Johansen
2026-08-10 7:26 ` John Johansen [this message]
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