Re: [PATCH] staging: rtl8723bs: fix out-of-bounds read in portctrl()

[Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>]

On Sun, Apr 05, 2026 at 12:14:49AM +0100, Delene Tchio Romuald wrote:
> In portctrl(), the pointer is advanced by hdrlen + iv_len +
> LLC_HEADER_LENGTH and then 2 bytes are read via memcpy() to extract
> the ether_type field. There is no check that the frame is large
> enough to contain these fields, so a short frame leads to an
> out-of-bounds read on kernel heap memory.
> 
> This code is reachable during 802.1X authentication when the station
> is in the ieee8021x_blocked state.
> 
> Add a frame length check before the pointer arithmetic and wrap the
> existing ether_type extraction in the else branch so that short
> frames are dropped safely.
> 
> Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org
> Signed-off-by: Delene Tchio Romuald <delenetchior1@gmail.com>
> ---
>  drivers/staging/rtl8723bs/core/rtw_recv.c | 28 +++++++++++++++--------
>  1 file changed, 18 insertions(+), 10 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/drivers/staging/rtl8723bs/core/rtw_recv.c b/drivers/staging/rtl8723bs/core/rtw_recv.c
> index 337671b12..1c84a5f6d 100644
> --- a/drivers/staging/rtl8723bs/core/rtw_recv.c
> +++ b/drivers/staging/rtl8723bs/core/rtw_recv.c
> @@ -532,17 +532,25 @@ static union recv_frame *portctrl(struct adapter *adapter, union recv_frame *pre
>  
>  			prtnframe = precv_frame;
>  
> -			/* get ether_type */
> -			ptr = ptr + pfhdr->attrib.hdrlen + pfhdr->attrib.iv_len + LLC_HEADER_LENGTH;
> -			memcpy(&be_tmp, ptr, 2);
> -			ether_type = ntohs(be_tmp);
> -
> -			if (ether_type == eapol_type)
> -				prtnframe = precv_frame;
> -			else {
> -				/* free this frame */
> -				rtw_free_recvframe(precv_frame, &adapter->recvpriv.free_recv_queue);
> +			/* Ensure frame has LLC header and ether_type */
> +			if (pfhdr->len < pattrib->hdrlen +
> +			    pattrib->iv_len + LLC_HEADER_LENGTH + 2) {
> +				rtw_free_recvframe(precv_frame,
> +						   &adapter->recvpriv.free_recv_queue);
>  				prtnframe = NULL;
> +			} else {
> +				/* get ether_type */
> +				ptr += pattrib->hdrlen +
> +				       pattrib->iv_len +
> +				       LLC_HEADER_LENGTH;
> +				memcpy(&be_tmp, ptr, 2);
> +				ether_type = ntohs(be_tmp);
> +
> +				if (ether_type != eapol_type) {
> +					rtw_free_recvframe(precv_frame,
> +							   &adapter->recvpriv.free_recv_queue);
> +					prtnframe = NULL;
> +				}
>  			}
>  		} else {
>  			/* allowed */
> -- 
> 2.43.0
> 
> 

Hi,

This is the friendly patch-bot of Greg Kroah-Hartman.  You have sent him
a patch that has triggered this response.  He used to manually respond
to these common problems, but in order to save his sanity (he kept
writing the same thing over and over, yet to different people), I was
created.  Hopefully you will not take offence and will fix the problem
in your patch and resubmit it so that it can be accepted into the Linux
kernel tree.

You are receiving this message because of the following common error(s)
as indicated below:

- You sent multiple patches, yet no indication of which ones should be
  applied in which order.  Greg could just guess, but if you are
  receiving this email, he guessed wrong and the patches didn't apply.
  Please read the section entitled "The canonical patch format" in the
  kernel file, Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst for a
  description of how to do this so that Greg has a chance to apply these
  correctly.

If you wish to discuss this problem further, or you have questions about
how to resolve this issue, please feel free to respond to this email and
Greg will reply once he has dug out from the pending patches received
from other developers.

thanks,

greg k-h's patch email bot