Re: Manual unbind of ATA devices causes use-after-free

From: Taras Kondratiuk
Date: Fri Nov 03 2017 - 12:32:37 EST


Quoting Tejun Heo (2017-11-03 06:19:37)
> Hello,
>
> On Wed, Nov 01, 2017 at 04:24:47PM -0700, Taras Kondratiuk wrote:
> > Manual unbind/remove unconditionally invokes devres_release_all which
> > calls ata_host_release() and frees ata_host/ata_port memory while it is
> > still being referenced (e.g as a parent of SCSI host).
> >
> > Is there a reason why ata_host is using derves which is not refcounted?
> > Does it make sense to add recounting to ata_host?
>
> Hmm... the removal path is supposed to drain everything synchronously.
> What kind of controller is it?

It drains synchronously if scsi_host_put(ap->scsi_host) in
ata_host_release() releases the last scsi_host reference. But when the issue
happens there is one more reference to scsi_host because sg device is
still open. The last reference will be dropped from sg_release.

I forgot to mention that the disk may not be clearly unmounted when I'm
unbinding it, but IMO it shouldn't cause use-after-free in the kernel.
Also even if sg_release() is called before ata_host_release() there is
still no guarantee that the last reference will be dropped, because
sg_release() schedules sg_remove_sfp_usercontext() to do actual release
and the work may not be completed in time.

Driver is AHCI PCI.