Re: [PATCH v2] ppp: remove the PPPIOCDETACH ioctl

From: David Miller
Date: Fri May 25 2018 - 07:59:18 EST


From: Eric Biggers <ebiggers3@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 23 May 2018 14:37:38 -0700

> From: Eric Biggers <ebiggers@xxxxxxxxxx>
>
> The PPPIOCDETACH ioctl effectively tries to "close" the given ppp file
> before f_count has reached 0, which is fundamentally a bad idea. It
> does check 'f_count < 2', which excludes concurrent operations on the
> file since they would only be possible with a shared fd table, in which
> case each fdget() would take a file reference. However, it fails to
> account for the fact that even with 'f_count == 1' the file can still be
> linked into epoll instances. As reported by syzbot, this can trivially
> be used to cause a use-after-free.
>
> Yet, the only known user of PPPIOCDETACH is pppd versions older than
> ppp-2.4.2, which was released almost 15 years ago (November 2003).
> Also, PPPIOCDETACH apparently stopped working reliably at around the
> same time, when the f_count check was added to the kernel, e.g. see
> https://lkml.org/lkml/2002/12/31/83. Also, the current 'f_count < 2'
> check makes PPPIOCDETACH only work in single-threaded applications; it
> always fails if called from a multithreaded application.
>
> All pppd versions released in the last 15 years just close() the file
> descriptor instead.
>
> Therefore, instead of hacking around this bug by exporting epoll
> internals to modules, and probably missing other related bugs, just
> remove the PPPIOCDETACH ioctl and see if anyone actually notices. Leave
> a stub in place that prints a one-time warning and returns EINVAL.
>
> Reported-by: syzbot+16363c99d4134717c05b@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Fixes: 1da177e4c3f4 ("Linux-2.6.12-rc2")
> Signed-off-by: Eric Biggers <ebiggers@xxxxxxxxxx>

Applied and queued up for -stable.