[PATCH 0/2] userns: reject out-of-range uid_map/gid_map values

From: Natasha Klaus

Date: Mon Sep 28 2026 - 03:26:19 EST


map_write() silently truncates uid_map/gid_map/projid_map values above
U32_MAX modulo 2^32 on 64-bit kernels, so e.g. "4294967301 1000 1" is
installed as "5 1000 1" without an error. Patch 1 rejects such values
with -EINVAL. Patch 2 adds a selftest for all three fields and for the
unchanged in-range path.

This is hardening, not a security fix.

The patch and the selftest were drafted by Claude Code (Claude Opus 5.5)
in an interactive session; I reviewed, built and tested them. The
assistant flagged the truncation while reading map_write(), and I
confirmed it by writing to uid_map on a running kernel.

Tested on v7.3-rc4-393-g165768bb7026 under virtme-ng, x86_64 defconfig
with CONFIG_USER_NS: all five selftest cases pass on the patched kernel.
On an unpatched 6.8 host, four of the five fail as expected.

Natasha Klaus (2):
userns: reject uid_map/gid_map values that do not fit in u32
selftests/namespaces: add uid_map/gid_map range tests

kernel/user_namespace.c | 14 +-
tools/testing/selftests/namespaces/.gitignore | 1 +
tools/testing/selftests/namespaces/Makefile | 3 +-
.../selftests/namespaces/uid_map_range_test.c | 155 ++++++++++++++++++
4 files changed, 169 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)
create mode 100644 tools/testing/selftests/namespaces/uid_map_range_test.c


base-commit: 165768bb70265b5c38cf0b73fafd75be235f8b14
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2.34.1