From e134d200d57d43b171dcb0b55c178a1a0c7db14a Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: David Howells Date: Wed, 21 Apr 2010 10:28:25 +0100 Subject: [PATCH] CRED: Fix a race in creds_are_invalid() in credentials debugging creds_are_invalid() reads both cred->usage and cred->subscribers and then compares them to make sure the number of processes subscribed to a cred struct never exceeds the refcount of that cred struct. The problem is that this can cause a race with both copy_creds() and exit_creds() as the two counters, whilst they are of atomic_t type, are only atomic with respect to themselves, and not atomic with respect to each other. This means that if creds_are_invalid() can read the values on one CPU whilst they're being modified on another CPU, and so can observe an evolving state in which the subscribers count now is greater than the usage count a moment before. Switching the order in which the counts are read cannot help, so the thing to do is to remove that particular check. I had considered rechecking the values to see if they're in flux if the test fails, but I can't guarantee they won't appear the same, even if they've changed several times in the meantime. Note that this can only happen if CONFIG_DEBUG_CREDENTIALS is enabled. The problem is only likely to occur with multithreaded programs, and can be tested by the tst-eintr1 program from glibc's "make check". The symptoms look like: CRED: Invalid credentials CRED: At include/linux/cred.h:240 CRED: Specified credentials: ffff88003dda5878 [real][eff] CRED: ->magic=43736564, put_addr=(null) CRED: ->usage=766, subscr=766 CRED: ->*uid = { 0,0,0,0 } CRED: ->*gid = { 0,0,0,0 } CRED: ->security is ffff88003d72f538 CRED: ->security {359, 359} ------------[ cut here ]------------ kernel BUG at kernel/cred.c:850! ... RIP: 0010:[] [] __invalid_creds+0x4e/0x52 ... Call Trace: [] copy_creds+0x6b/0x23f Note the ->usage=766 and subscr=766. The values appear the same because they've been re-read since the check was made. Reported-by: Roland McGrath Signed-off-by: David Howells Signed-off-by: James Morris --- kernel/cred.c | 2 -- 1 file changed, 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/kernel/cred.c b/kernel/cred.c index ce1a52b9e8a3..62af1816c235 100644 --- a/kernel/cred.c +++ b/kernel/cred.c @@ -793,8 +793,6 @@ bool creds_are_invalid(const struct cred *cred) { if (cred->magic != CRED_MAGIC) return true; - if (atomic_read(&cred->usage) < atomic_read(&cred->subscribers)) - return true; #ifdef CONFIG_SECURITY_SELINUX if (selinux_is_enabled()) { if ((unsigned long) cred->security < PAGE_SIZE) -- 2.34.1