Re: [PATCH] vsprintf: Make "null" pointer dereference more robust

Rasmus Villemoes
2018-03-05T15:16:39Z

On 2 March 2018 at 13:53, Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com> wrote:
> %p has many modifiers where the pointer is dereferenced. An invalid
> pointer might cause kernel to crash silently.
>
> Note that printk() formats the string under logbuf_lock. Any recursive
> printks are redirected to the printk_safe implementation and the messages
> are stored into per-CPU buffers. These buffers might be eventually flushed
> in printk_safe_flush_on_panic() but it is not guaranteed.

Yeah, it's annoying that we can't reliably WARN for bogus vsprintf() uses.

> In general, we should do our best to get useful message from printk().
> All pointers to the first memory page must be invalid. Let's prevent
> the dereference and print "(null)" in this case. This is already done
> in many other situations, including "%s" format handling and many
> page fault handlers.
>
> Signed-off-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
> ---
> lib/vsprintf.c | 2 +-
> 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
>
> diff --git a/lib/vsprintf.c b/lib/vsprintf.c
> index d7a708f82559..5c2d1f44218a 100644
> --- a/lib/vsprintf.c
> +++ b/lib/vsprintf.c
> @@ -1849,7 +1849,7 @@ char *pointer(const char *fmt, char *buf, char *end, void *ptr,
> {
> const int default_width = 2 * sizeof(void *);
>
> - if (!ptr && *fmt != 'K' && *fmt != 'x') {
> + if ((unsigned long)ptr < PAGE_SIZE && *fmt != 'K' && *fmt != 'x') {

ISTM that accidentally passing an ERR_PTR would be just as likely as
passing a NULL pointer (or some small offset from one), so if we do
this, shouldn't the test also cover IS_ERR values?

Rasmus