Re: [PATCH v3 1/1] mm: Fix the uninitialized use in overcommit_policy_handler

[Andrew Morton]

On Thu, 23 Sep 2021 02:05:24 +0000 Chen Jun <chenjun102@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> An unexpected value of /proc/sys/vm/overcommit_memory we will get,
> after running the following program.
> 
> int main()
> {
>     int fd = open("/proc/sys/vm/overcommit_memory", O_RDWR)
>     write(fd, "1", 1);
>     write(fd, "2", 1);
>     close(fd);
> }
> 
> write(fd, "2", 1) will pass *ppos = 1 to proc_dointvec_minmax.
> proc_dointvec_minmax will return 0 without setting new_policy.
> 
> t.data = &new_policy;
> ret = proc_dointvec_minmax(&t, write, buffer, lenp, ppos)
>       -->do_proc_dointvec
>          -->__do_proc_dointvec
>               if (write) {
>                 if (proc_first_pos_non_zero_ignore(ppos, table))
>                   goto out;
> 
> sysctl_overcommit_memory = new_policy;
> 
> so sysctl_overcommit_memory will be set to an uninitialized value.
> 
> Check whether new_policy has been changed by proc_dointvec_minmax.
> 

Thanks.  I added a cc:stable to this, so the fix will be backported
into earlier kernels.