Re: [PATCH] mtd: physmap: physmap-bt1-rom: Fix unintentional stack access

From: Miquel Raynal
Date: Fri Feb 12 2021 - 09:51:51 EST


Hi Gustavo,

"Gustavo A. R. Silva" <gustavo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote on Fri, 12 Feb
2021 08:45:33 -0600:

> On 2/12/21 08:12, Miquel Raynal wrote:
> > Hi Gustavo,
> >
> > "Gustavo A. R. Silva" <gustavoars@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote on Fri, 12 Feb 2021
> > 04:40:22 -0600:
> >
> >> Cast &data to (char *) in order to avoid unintentionally accessing
> >> the stack.
> >>
> >> Notice that data is of type u32, so any increment to &data
> >> will be in the order of 4-byte chunks, and this piece of code
> >> is actually intended to be a byte offset.
> >
> > I don't have the same reading. I don't say that Coverity report is
> > wrong, but let's discuss this a bit further.
> >
> > Given that &data is of type u32 *, you say that "&data + shift"
> > produces increments of 4-bytes, ie. we would access "&data + 4 *
> > shift"? Because I don't think this is the case (again, I may be wrong).
>
> Yep; this is pointer arithmetic. If you have an object ptr of type u32 *:
>
> u32 *ptr;
>
> and let's say it points to address 100. If you increment it by one:
>
> ptr++
>
> ptr will now point to address 104, not to 101.
>
> Now, if instead, you first cast ptr to 'char *' and increment it by 1,
> then it will point to address 101.

Yep, I got confused with the proper addition compared to dereferencing.

Patch looks legitimate.

Thanks,
Miquèl