Re: [GIT PULL] Smack patches for v5.4 - retry

From: Linus Torvalds
Date: Mon Sep 23 2019 - 17:35:50 EST


On Mon, Sep 23, 2019 at 1:14 PM Casey Schaufler <casey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Thank for the instruction. I think this is correct.

Looks fine, pulled.

That said, when I look closer:

> Jia-Ju Bai (1):
> security: smack: Fix possible null-pointer dereferences in smack_socket_sock_rcv_skb()

This one seems wrong.

Not seriously so, but the quoting the logic from the commit:

In smack_socket_sock_rcv_skb(), there is an if statement
on line 3920 to check whether skb is NULL:

if (skb && skb->secmark != 0)

This check indicates skb can be NULL in some cases.

and the fact is, skb _cannot_ be NULL, because when you test the
security of receiving an skb, you by definition always have an skb.

There is one single place that calls security_sock_rcv_skb(), and it
very much has a real skb.

So instead of adding a _new_ test for skb being NULL, the old test for
a NULL skb should just have been removed. It really doesn't make any
sense to have a NULL skb in that path - if some memory allocation had
failed on the receive path, that just means that the receive is never
done, it doesn't mean that you'd test a NULL skb for security policy
violations.

Anyway, it's pulled, but I think somebody should have checked and
thought about the automated tool reports a bit more..

Linus