# \[PATCH 1/4\] audit: Syscall rules are not applied to existing processes on non-x86

- From: Anton Blanchard \<hidden\>
- Date: 2013-01-08 23:46:20 
- List: linuxppc-dev
- Page: https://ratatoskr.run/linuxppc-dev/2013/01/3980225
- Thread: https://ratatoskr.run/linuxppc-dev/2013/01/3980225/t.md

```text

Commit b05d8447e782 (audit: inline audit_syscall_entry to reduce
burden on archs) changed audit_syscall_entry to check for a dummy
context before calling __audit_syscall_entry. Unfortunately the dummy
context state is maintained in __audit_syscall_entry so once set it
never gets cleared, even if the audit rules change.

As a result, if there are no auditing rules when a process starts
then it will never be subject to any rules added later. x86 doesn't
see this because it has an assembly fast path that calls directly into
__audit_syscall_entry.

I noticed this issue when working on audit performance optimisations.
I wrote a set of simple test cases available at:

http://ozlabs.org/~anton/junkcode/audit_tests.tar.gz

02_new_rule.py fails without the patch and passes with it. The
test case clears all rules, starts a process, adds a rule then
verifies the process produces a syscall audit record.

Signed-off-by: Anton Blanchard <redacted>
Cc: <stable@kernel.org> # 3.3+
---

Index: b/include/linux/audit.h
===================================================================
--- a/include/linux/audit.h
+++ b/include/linux/audit.h
@@ -119,7 +119,7 @@ static inline void audit_syscall_entry(i
 				       unsigned long a1, unsigned long a2,
 				       unsigned long a3)
 {
-	if (unlikely(!audit_dummy_context()))
+	if (unlikely(current->audit_context))
 		__audit_syscall_entry(arch, major, a0, a1, a2, a3);
 }
 static inline void audit_syscall_exit(void *pt_regs)
```