Re: [PATCH] ALSA: wavefront: Fix integer overflow in sample size validation

From: Takashi Iwai

Date: Wed Nov 05 2025 - 03:32:45 EST


On Tue, 04 Nov 2025 15:10:18 +0100,
moonafterrain@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>
> From: Junrui Luo <moonafterrain@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> The wavefront_send_sample() function has an integer overflow issue
> when validating sample size. The header->size field is u32 but gets
> cast to int for comparison with dev->freemem
>
> Fix by using unsigned comparison to avoid integer overflow.

This is not really a right fix, unfortunately.
wavefront_freemem() itself can return a negative value, and the cast
would ignore it.

A better alternative could be something like:
if (dev->freemem < 0 || dev->freemem < header->size) {
so that the cast can be dropped to be compared as unsigned
implicitly.

Not sure whether this still triggers some warnings in the recent
compilers, though. Need testing.


thanks,

Takashi

>
> Reported-by: Yuhao Jiang <danisjiang@xxxxxxxxx>
> Reported-by: Junrui Luo <moonafterrain@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> Fixes: 1da177e4c3f4 ("Linux-2.6.12-rc2")
> Cc: stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Signed-off-by: Junrui Luo <moonafterrain@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
> sound/isa/wavefront/wavefront_synth.c | 4 ++--
> 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/sound/isa/wavefront/wavefront_synth.c b/sound/isa/wavefront/wavefront_synth.c
> index cd5c177943aa..4a8c507eae71 100644
> --- a/sound/isa/wavefront/wavefront_synth.c
> +++ b/sound/isa/wavefront/wavefront_synth.c
> @@ -950,9 +950,9 @@ wavefront_send_sample (snd_wavefront_t *dev,
> if (header->size) {
> dev->freemem = wavefront_freemem (dev);
>
> - if (dev->freemem < (int)header->size) {
> + if ((unsigned int)dev->freemem < header->size) {
> dev_err(dev->card->dev,
> - "insufficient memory to load %d byte sample.\n",
> + "insufficient memory to load %u byte sample.\n",
> header->size);
> return -ENOMEM;
> }
> --
> 2.51.1.dirty
>