Re: [kernel-hardening] Re: [PATCH v9 1/4] syscalls: Verify address limit before returning to user-mode

From: Al Viro
Date: Tue May 09 2017 - 23:14:29 EST


On Wed, May 10, 2017 at 03:45:24AM +0100, Al Viro wrote:

> FWIW, some parts of that queue are obviously sane; it's the conversions of
> kernel_write() and friends to ->read_iter/->write_iter() that are non-starters.

Egads... OK, I *have* misread what you are doing there. Your vfs_iter_read()
works for files sans ->read_iter(). For strange values of "works" - you
hardwire "it's either iovec or kvec iterator" into its calling conventions,
which is a trouble waiting to happen.

What's the point? What's wrong with having kernel_read()/kernel_readv()/etc.?
You still have set_fs() in there; doing that one level up in call chain would
be just fine... IDGI.

Broken commit: "net: don't play with address limits in kernel_recvmsg".
It would be OK if it was only about data. Unfortunately, that's not
true in one case: svc_udp_recvfrom() wants ->msg_control.

Another delicate place: you can't assume that write() always advances
file position by its (positive) return value. btrfs stuff is sensitive
to that.

ashmem probably _is_ OK with demanding ->read_iter(), but I'm not sure
about blind asma->file->f_pos += ret. That's begging for races. Actually,
scratch that - it *is* racy.