Re: [PATCH 0/5] block subsystem refcounter conversions

[James Bottomley]

On Mon, 2017-02-20 at 17:56 +0100, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 20, 2017 at 07:41:01AM -0800, James Bottomley wrote:
> > On Mon, 2017-02-20 at 08:15 -0700, Jens Axboe wrote:
> > > On 02/20/2017 04:16 AM, Elena Reshetova wrote:
> > > > Now when new refcount_t type and API are finally merged
> > > > (see include/linux/refcount.h), the following
> > > > patches convert various refcounters in the block susystem from 
> > > > atomic_t to refcount_t. By doing this we prevent intentional or
> > > > accidental underflows or overflows that can led to use-after
> > > > -free vulnerabilities.
> > 
> > This description isn't right ... nothing is prevented; we get 
> > warnings on saturation and use after free with this.
> 
> The thing that is prevented is overflow and then a use-after-free by
> making it a leak.
> 
> Modular stuff, you put and free at: (n+1) mod n, by saturating at n-1
> we'll never get there.
> 
> So you loose use-after-free, you gain a resource leak. The general 
> idea being that use-after-free is a nice trampoline for exploits, 
> leaks are 'only' a DoS.

OK, I see the intention: it's protection from outside influence.  It
still doesn't prevent *us* from screwing up in the kernel and inducing
a use after free by doing too many puts (or too few gets) ... that's
what the message suggests to me (me coding wrongly is accidental
underflows or overflows as I read it).

James