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From: Stepan Ionichev <sozdayvek@gmail.com>
To: andy@kernel.org
Cc: geert@linux-m68k.org, hcazarim@yahoo.com,
	gregkh@linuxfoundation.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
	stable@vger.kernel.org, sozdayvek@gmail.com
Subject: [PATCH] auxdisplay: line-display: fix OOB read on zero-length message_store()
Date: Thu, 14 May 2026 22:43:42 +0500	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20260514174342.28451-1-sozdayvek@gmail.com> (raw)

linedisp_display() unconditionally reads msg[count - 1] before
checking whether count is zero, so a write of zero bytes to the
message sysfs attribute hits msg[-1]:

	write(fd, "", 0);

	-> message_store(..., buf, count=0)
	   -> linedisp_display(linedisp, buf, count=0)
	      -> msg[count - 1] == '\n'  ; OOB read

The kernfs write buffer for that store is a 1-byte allocation
(kernfs_fop_write_iter() does kmalloc(len + 1) with len == 0),
so msg[-1] is a 1-byte read before the slab object. On a
KASAN-enabled kernel this trips an out-of-bounds report and
panics; on stock kernels it silently reads adjacent slab data
and, if that byte happens to be '\n', the following count--
wraps ssize_t 0 to -1 and is then passed to kmemdup_nul().

linedisp_display() is reached from the message_store() sysfs
callback (drivers/auxdisplay/line-display.c message attribute,
mode 0644) and from the in-tree initial-message setup with
count == -1, so the OOB path is only userspace-triggerable via
zero-byte writes; vfs_write() does not short-circuit on
count == 0 and kernfs_fop_write_iter() dispatches the store
callback regardless.

Guard the trailing-newline trim with a count check. The
existing if (!count) block then takes the clear-display path
unchanged.

Affects every auxdisplay driver that registers via
linedisp_register() / linedisp_attach(): ht16k33, max6959,
img-ascii-lcd, seg-led-gpio.

Fixes: 7e76aece6f03 ("auxdisplay: Extract character line display core support")
Signed-off-by: Stepan Ionichev <sozdayvek@gmail.com>
---
 drivers/auxdisplay/line-display.c | 2 +-
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/drivers/auxdisplay/line-display.c b/drivers/auxdisplay/line-display.c
index fb6d92941..915eb5cd9 100644
--- a/drivers/auxdisplay/line-display.c
+++ b/drivers/auxdisplay/line-display.c
@@ -173,7 +173,7 @@ static int linedisp_display(struct linedisp *linedisp, const char *msg,
 		count = strlen(msg);
 
 	/* if the string ends with a newline, trim it */
-	if (msg[count - 1] == '\n')
+	if (count && msg[count - 1] == '\n')
 		count--;
 
 	if (!count) {
-- 
2.43.0


                 reply	other threads:[~2026-05-14 17:44 UTC|newest]

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