Re: [PATCH] net: bridge: Fix refcnt issues in dev_ioctl

[Nikolay Aleksandrov]

Hi Ziqi,
On 8/19/23 11:10, Ziqi Zhao wrote:
> In the bug reported by Syzbot, certain bridge devices would have a
> leaked reference created by race conditions in dev_ioctl, specifically,
> under SIOCBRADDIF or SIOCBRDELIF operations. The reference leak would

How would it leak a reference, could you elaborate?
The reference is always taken and always released after the call.

> be shown in the periodic unregister_netdevice call, which throws a
> warning and cause Syzbot to report a crash. Upon inspection of the

If you reproduced it, is the device later removed or is it really stuck?

> logic in dev_ioctl, it seems the reference was introduced to ensure
> proper access to the bridge device after rtnl_unlock. and the latter
> function is necessary to maintain the following lock order in any
> bridge related ioctl calls:
>
> 1) br_ioctl_mutex => 2) rtnl_lock
>
> Conceptually, though, br_ioctl_mutex could be considered more specific
> than rtnl_lock given their usages, hence swapping their order would be
> a reasonable proposal. This patch changes all related call sites to
> maintain the reversed order of the two locks:
>
> 1) rtnl_lock => 2) br_ioctl_mutex
>
> By doing so, the extra reference introduced in dev_ioctl is no longer
> needed, and hence the reference leak bug is now resolved.

IIRC there was no bug, it was a false-positive. The reference is held a 
bit longer but then released, so the device is deleted later.
I might be remembering wrong, but I think I briefly looked into this 
when it was reported. If that's not the case I'd be interested to see
a new report/trace because the bug might be somewhere else.

> Reported-by: syzbot+881d65229ca4f9ae8c84@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Fixes: ad2f99aedf8f ("net: bridge: move bridge ioctls out of .ndo_do_ioctl")
> Signed-off-by: Ziqi Zhao <astrajoan@xxxxxxxxx>
> ---
>   net/bridge/br_ioctl.c | 4 ----
>   net/core/dev_ioctl.c  | 8 +-------
>   net/socket.c          | 2 ++
>   3 files changed, 3 insertions(+), 11 deletions(-)

Thanks,
 Nik