[PATCHES v3 0/5] perf DSO hardening series

From: Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo

Date: Tue Aug 11 2026 - 13:51:59 EST


Hi,

Please consider merging,

Five hardening fixes for the perf DSO data handling code path, all found
by the sashiko-bot AI reviewer:

- __open_dso() can return a file descriptor of 0 (stdin) when
dso__get_filename() fails without setting errno, so fd = -errno = 0
looked like a successfully opened DSO;

- dso__decompress_kmodule_path() calls close(fd) with fd = -1 when
decompression fails or the DSO is not compressed, clobbering errno
with EBADF on the error path;

- file_read() and file_size() read the stale global errno after
try_to_open_dso() fails, when by then errno has been through
mutex_lock(), nsinfo__mountns_enter() and several open() attempts;

- dso_cache__memcpy() underflows when cache->size is smaller than the
RB tree offset (short pread), computing a huge memcpy length;

- dso__read_symbol() asserts on an input-dependent condition instead
of doing a runtime check, keeping the BPF metadata safe from crafted
input.

Best regards,

- Arnaldo

What changed from v2 (2f944ea022b6429f):

PATCH 3/5:
- file_size() now also uses the stored fd error instead of the stale
global errno on open failure; the commit was retitled to cover both
file_read() and file_size() [sashiko-bot review of PATCH 3/5].
- Comment corrected: on failure dso__data(dso)->fd is always
negative — -errno from __open_dso() or -1 from do_open() — never 0.

PATCH 4/5:
- Clarified that returning 0 for an offset past a short-read chunk
is EOF semantics — for a regular file a short pread only happens at
end-of-file, so 0 is what a direct pread() at that offset would
return — not a cache-miss that triggers a re-read; comment and
commit message updated [sashiko-bot review of PATCH 4/5].

- The lockless dso cache RB tree lookup vs. concurrent insert
question raised in the same review is pre-existing; it is recorded
in tools/perf/TODO.hardening (item 175) for follow-up work, with
no change to this series.

What changed from v1 (20260802142022.154219-1-acme@xxxxxxxxxx):

PATCH 1/5:
- __open_dso() now sets errno = ENOENT directly when
dso__get_filename() fails with errno == 0, instead of only computing
fd = -ENOENT. Callers that check errno after a negative fd (e.g.
file_read() returning -errno) no longer get 0/EOF for an open
failure [sashiko-bot review of PATCH 1/5].

- Rebased onto the current perf-tools-next head (bf10e6ee2ac3034c).

This series was developed with assistance from Claude (claude-opus-4.6)
and Opencode (deepseek-v4-flash-free) for code analysis, patch
generation, and commit message composition. All changes were validated
by the maintainer.

Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo (5):
perf dso: Guard against errno==0 when dso__get_filename() returns NULL
perf dso: Guard close() against invalid fd in
dso__decompress_kmodule_path()
perf dso: Use stored fd error instead of stale errno in file_read()
and file_size()
perf dso: Guard against cache underflow on short reads in
dso_cache__memcpy()
perf dso: Replace assert with runtime check in dso__read_symbol()

tools/perf/util/dso.c | 39 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-------
1 file changed, 32 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-)

base-commit: bf10e6ee2ac3034c9068e03eed418fd16961984e
v2-head: 2f944ea022b6429f
v1-head: f6cb9e46c7b8949b