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[PATCH v13 03/15] x86/kexec: Fix potential buffer overflow in prepare_elf_headers()

From: Jinjie Ruan <hidden>
Date: 2026-05-11 03:06:01
Also in: kexec, linux-devicetree, linux-doc, linux-riscv, lkml, loongarch
Subsystem: the rest, x86 architecture (32-bit and 64-bit) · Maintainers: Linus Torvalds, Thomas Gleixner, Ingo Molnar, Borislav Petkov, Dave Hansen

There is a race condition between the kexec_load() system call
(crash kernel loading path) and memory hotplug operations that can lead
to buffer overflow and potential kernel crash.

During prepare_elf_headers(), the following steps occur:
1. get_nr_ram_ranges_callback() queries current System RAM memory ranges
2. Allocates buffer based on queried count
3. prepare_elf64_ram_headers_callback() populates ranges from memblock

If memory hotplug occurs between step 1 and step 3, the number of ranges
can increase, causing out-of-bounds write when populating cmem->ranges[].

This happens because kexec_load() uses kexec_trylock (atomic_t) while
memory hotplug uses device_hotplug_lock (mutex), so they don't serialize
with each other.

Since x86 supports crash hotplug, any data inconsistency caused by
a race during the initial load will be corrected by the subsequent
hotplug update. However, we must prevent a buffer overflow if the
number of memory regions increases between the two passes.

Add a boundary checking in prepare_elf64_ram_headers_callback() to ensure
that the number of populated ranges does not exceed
the allocated maximum.

Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@kernel.org>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>
Cc: Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>
Cc: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Baoquan He <redacted>
Cc: Mike Rapoport <rppt@kernel.org>
Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org
Fixes: 8d5f894a3108 ("x86: kexec_file: lift CRASH_MAX_RANGES limit on crash_mem buffer")
Signed-off-by: Jinjie Ruan <redacted>
---
 arch/x86/kernel/crash.c | 3 +++
 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+)
diff --git a/arch/x86/kernel/crash.c b/arch/x86/kernel/crash.c
index cd796818d94d..fa6a1feb1bf1 100644
--- a/arch/x86/kernel/crash.c
+++ b/arch/x86/kernel/crash.c
@@ -226,6 +226,9 @@ static int prepare_elf64_ram_headers_callback(struct resource *res, void *arg)
 {
 	struct crash_mem *cmem = arg;
 
+	if (cmem->nr_ranges >= cmem->max_nr_ranges)
+		return -ENOMEM;
+
 	cmem->ranges[cmem->nr_ranges].start = res->start;
 	cmem->ranges[cmem->nr_ranges].end = res->end;
 	cmem->nr_ranges++;
-- 
2.34.1

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