Re: [PATCH] staging: dgnc: fix potential format string flaw

[Joe Perches]

On Wed, 2013-09-11 at 11:19 -0700, Kees Cook wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 11, 2013 at 2:31 AM, Dan Carpenter <dan.carpenter@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 10:19:17PM -0700, Kees Cook wrote:
> >> In the former case, format characters will get processed by the
> >> sprintf logic. In the latter, they are printed as-is. In this specific
> >> case, if there was a way to inject strings like "ohai %n" into the
> >> msgbuf string, the former would actually attempt to resolve the %n. In
> >> the simple case, this could lead to Oopses, and in the unlucky case,
> >> it could allow arbitrary memory writing and execution control.
> >>
> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontrolled_format_string
> >
> > The kernel ignores %n so hopefully it can't actually write to memory.
> 
> I wish! This is not the case, though. See FORMAT_TYPE_NRCHARS in
> lib/vsprintf.c's vsnprintf().
> 
> $ git grep '%n' | wc -l
> 111

Umm.

See: lib/vsprintf.c

/**
 * vsnprintf - Format a string and place it in a buffer
[...]
 * %n is ignored

%n does work for vsscanf though.


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