Re: [PATCH net] xfrm_user: fix info leak in build_mapping()

[Jakub Kicinski]

On Mon, 6 Apr 2026 18:08:27 +0200 Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 06, 2026 at 08:58:59AM -0700, Jakub Kicinski wrote:
> > On Mon, 6 Apr 2026 08:54:49 -0700 Jakub Kicinski wrote:  
> > > You're right, skb owner is responsible for clearing after put.
> > > Tho, Netlink is not as perf critical as real networking, I wish
> > > we at least had a helper which reserves the space and clears it :/
> > > This is not the first or the second time we hit this sort of a bug.  
> > 
> > We could make nlmsg_append() do that. Mostly because I don't have 
> > a better idea for a name and nlmsg_append is only used once ;)  
> 
> As shown in my other patch:
> 	https://lore.kernel.org/r/2026040621-poison-gristle-aaa3@gregkh
> we need this in at least 2 places, don't know if it's worth doing it for
> all messages?

I was thinking -- add the helper so that we can use it in places we're
touching anyway. No need to mess with correct existing code.

> I guess nlmsg_append() would work?  It tries to do some zeroing out for
> alignment for some reason...
> 
> Want me to do that?  I don't have a way to test any of this, I just
> found it using some static code analysis tools that looked at holes in
> structures.

Do you have any more Netlink leaks in the queue? If you do let's do it,
if you don't we can wait until the next victi^w patch to arrive.