Re: [PATCH] staging: rtl8723bs: Fix uninitialized variable

[Wenli Looi]

On Sun, Jun 6, 2021 at 12:13 AM Greg Kroah-Hartman
<gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 06, 2021 at 12:00:21AM -0700, Wenli Looi wrote:
> > Uninitialized struct with invalid pointer causes BUG and prevents access
> > point from working. Access point works once I apply this patch.
> >
> > https://forum.armbian.com/topic/14727-wifi-ap-kernel-bug-in-kernel-5444/
> > has more details.
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Wenli Looi <wlooi@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> > ---
> >  drivers/staging/rtl8723bs/os_dep/ioctl_cfg80211.c | 2 +-
> >  1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
> >
> > diff --git a/drivers/staging/rtl8723bs/os_dep/ioctl_cfg80211.c b/drivers/staging/rtl8723bs/os_dep/ioctl_cfg80211.c
> > index 2fb80b6eb..7308e1185 100644
> > --- a/drivers/staging/rtl8723bs/os_dep/ioctl_cfg80211.c
> > +++ b/drivers/staging/rtl8723bs/os_dep/ioctl_cfg80211.c
> > @@ -2384,7 +2384,7 @@ void rtw_cfg80211_indicate_sta_assoc(struct adapter *padapter, u8 *pmgmt_frame,
> >       DBG_871X(FUNC_ADPT_FMT"\n", FUNC_ADPT_ARG(padapter));
> >
> >       {
> > -             struct station_info sinfo;
> > +             struct station_info sinfo = {};
>
> What caused this bug to show up?  Did it happen from some other commit?
>
> Are you sure that all of the fields are being cleared properly here,
> what about any "holes" in the structure?
>
> thanks,
> greg k-h

I believe this bug has been present since the driver was added to
staging: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/554c0a3abf216c991c5ebddcdb2c08689ecd290b

It's probably not necessary to zero the entire struct, only
sinfo->pertid, which causes problems with the code here:
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/f5b6eb1e018203913dfefcf6fa988649ad11ad6e/net/wireless/nl80211.c#L5919

You can see the following proposed OpenWrt patch
(700-wifi-8723bs-ap-bugfix.patch in
https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/pull/4053/files) which sets
sinfo.pertid = 0; instead of zeroing the struct.

Looking at similar code in a non-staging driver, we can see that the
code there zeros the struct using kzalloc():
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/f5b6eb1e018203913dfefcf6fa988649ad11ad6e/drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/brcm80211/brcmfmac/cfg80211.c#L6064

Do you think kzalloc() would be preferable?

Sorry, I'm not familiar with "holes" in the struct.