linux-kernel - Memory allocation issues after "sysctl: Convert to iter interfaces"

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-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Date:   Wed, 24 Feb 2021 17:02:09 -0800
From:   Ivan Babrou <ivan@...udflare.com>
To:     kernel-team <kernel-team@...udflare.com>
Cc:     "Matthew Wilcox (Oracle)" <willy@...radead.org>,
        Christoph Hellwig <hch@....de>,
        Al Viro <viro@...iv.linux.org.uk>,
        Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@...nel.org>,
        Kees Cook <keescook@...omium.org>,
        Iurii Zaikin <yzaikin@...gle.com>,
        Alexey Dobriyan <adobriyan@...il.com>,
        linux-kernel <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Memory allocation issues after "sysctl: Convert to iter interfaces"

Hello,

We started seeing allocation failures on procfs reads after
commit 4bd6a7353ee1 "sysctl: Convert to iter interfaces".

I haven't done a full bisect, but the decoded stacks point
squarely at the following piece of code which was introduced:

kbuf = kzalloc(count + 1, GFP_KERNEL);

Previously reading /proc/sys/net/core/somaxconn required order 1
and order 3 allocations from the kernel, which can be seen from:

$ sudo perf record -g -e kmem:mm_page_alloc_zone_locked -- \
    cat /proc/sys/net/core/somaxconn

Now we see order 6 + order 6 allocations from cat, and even:

read(3, 0x7f8d9d3f3000, 131072) = -1 ENOMEM (Cannot allocate memory)

See the following gist for full allocation stacks on 5.4 and 5.10:

* https://gist.github.com/bobrik/dd03cce0aaeef5acd5faecc32bd44530

This seems like a regression, and unprivileged users being
able to force order 6 allocations onto the kernel doesn't feel good.