Thread (20 messages) flat view 20 messages, 2 authors, 2026-05-19

Re: [PATCH v13 04/15] arm64: kexec_file: Fix potential buffer overflow in prepare_elf_headers()

From: Breno Leitao <leitao@debian.org>
Date: 2026-05-11 09:49:14
Also in: kexec, linux-devicetree, linux-doc, linux-riscv, lkml, loongarch

On Mon, May 11, 2026 at 11:04:43AM +0800, Jinjie Ruan wrote:
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. The first for_each_mem_range() queries current System RAM memory ranges
2. Allocates buffer based on queried count
3. The 2st for_each_mem_range() 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.

Add the explicit bounds checking to prevent out-of-bounds access.
It seems you have a TOCTOU type of issue, and this seems to be shrinking
the window, but not fully solving it?
quoted hunk ↗ jump to hunk
Cc: Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@arm.com>
Cc: Will Deacon <redacted>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Baoquan He <redacted>
Cc: Breno Leitao <leitao@debian.org>
Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org
Fixes: 3751e728cef2 ("arm64: kexec_file: add crash dump support")
Closes: https://sashiko.dev/#/patchset/20260323072745.2481719-1-ruanjinjie%40huawei.com
Signed-off-by: Jinjie Ruan <redacted>
---
 arch/arm64/kernel/machine_kexec_file.c | 5 +++++
 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+)
diff --git a/arch/arm64/kernel/machine_kexec_file.c b/arch/arm64/kernel/machine_kexec_file.c
index e31fabed378a..a67e7b1abbab 100644
--- a/arch/arm64/kernel/machine_kexec_file.c
+++ b/arch/arm64/kernel/machine_kexec_file.c
@@ -59,6 +59,11 @@ static int prepare_elf_headers(void **addr, unsigned long *sz)
 	cmem->max_nr_ranges = nr_ranges;
 	cmem->nr_ranges = 0;
 	for_each_mem_range(i, &start, &end) {
+		if (cmem->nr_ranges >= cmem->max_nr_ranges) {
+			ret = -ENOMEM;
-ENOMEM seems to be the the wrong errno. This isn't an allocation
failure; it's a transient race. -EBUSY or -EAGAIN would be more honest
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