linux-kernel - Re: net: uninitialized loopback addr leaks to userspace

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Date:	Mon, 8 Jun 2009 12:00:47 +0200
From:	Vegard Nossum <vegard.nossum@...il.com>
To:	John Dykstra <john.dykstra1@...il.com>
Cc:	Linux Netdev List <netdev@...r.kernel.org>,
	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>,
	Pekka Enberg <penberg@...helsinki.fi>,
	LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: net: uninitialized loopback addr leaks to userspace

2009/6/7 John Dykstra <john.dykstra1@...il.com>:
> On Sat, 2009-05-30 at 22:23 +0200, Vegard Nossum wrote:
>> It seems that loopback's hardware address is never initialized by the
>> kernel. So if userspace attempts to read this address before it has
>> been set, the kernel will return some uninitialized data (only 6
>> bytes, though).
>
> Thank you for the report, Vegard.
>
> I've been unable to reproduce the problem you describe, using
> 2.6-30-rc8, this test program and a couple of kernel builds for system
> load:
[...]
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Looking at the kernel code, it appears that all bytes of struct
> net_device, including the L2 address, are initialized to zeros at
> interface creation time.
>
> Can you spot a difference between your test procedures and mine that
> would enable me to reproduce the problem?

Hi,

I just tried your test program on a linux-next kernel, it works beautifully :-)

(I made one change: The stack grows downwards on x86, so I think you
should put child_stack + 16386 as the stack to clone()?)

As I wrote in reply to Stephen Hemminger, this problem seems to be
caused by a particular patch in linux-next:

commit f001fde5eadd915f4858d22ed70d7040f48767cf
Author: Jiri Pirko <jpirko@...hat.com>
Date:   Tue May 5 02:48:28 2009 +0000

   net: introduce a list of device addresses dev_addr_list (v6)

Thanks for testing.


Vegard

-- 
"The animistic metaphor of the bug that maliciously sneaked in while
the programmer was not looking is intellectually dishonest as it
disguises that the error is the programmer's own creation."
	-- E. W. Dijkstra, EWD1036
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@...r.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/