Re: [PATCH] seccomp: fix the usage of get/put_seccomp_filter() in seccomp_get_filter()

Oleg Nesterov
2017-09-21T11:31:54Z

On 09/20, Kees Cook wrote:
>
> I like doing these sanity checks -- this isn't fast-path at all.

Yes, but see another "introduce get_nth_filter()" cleanup I sent, it is
similar but more suitable for Tycho's "retrieving seccomp flags" patch.

> > + for (filter = orig; count > 1; filter = filter->prev)
^^^^^^^^^
I just noticed that I forgot to replace this check with "count != 1".
Correctness wise this doesn't matter, but looks more clean.

> > count--;
> > - }
> > -
> > - if (WARN_ON(count != 1 || !filter)) {
> > - /* The filter tree shouldn't shrink while we're using it. */
> > - ret = -ENOENT;
> > - goto out;
> > - }
>
> Similarly, there's no reason to remove this check either.

Well, I disagree, but this is subjective so I won't insist.

Why do we want this WARN_ON() ? The sanity check can only fail if we have
a bug in 10 lines above. Lets look at the code after this cleanup,

count = 0;
for (filter = orig; filter; filter = filter->prev)
count++;

if (filter_off >= count)
goto out;

count -= filter_off;
for (filter = orig; count != 1; filter = filter->prev)
count--;

Do we want to check "count == 1" after the 2nd loop? I don't think so.
filter != NULL ? IMO makes no sense. Again, it can only be NULL if the
quoted code above is wrong, and in this case the next line

refcount_inc(&filter->usage);

will crash.

Oleg.