Thread (6 messages) 6 messages, 1 author, 1d ago
WARM1d

[PATCH v4 4/5] perf trace-event: Fix heap overflows in read_ftrace_printk()/read_saved_cmdline()

From: Tanushree Shah <hidden>
Date: 2026-07-25 19:17:41
Also in: linux-perf-users
Subsystem: performance events subsystem, the rest · Maintainers: Peter Zijlstra, Ingo Molnar, Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo, Namhyung Kim, Linus Torvalds

Both functions read an attacker-controlled size directly from the
input file and pass size + 1 to malloc() before reading size bytes
into the result:

read_ftrace_printk(): size is an unsigned int from read4(). When
size == UINT_MAX, size + 1 overflows to 0, so malloc(0) returns a
minimal allocation while size itself remains UINT_MAX.

read_saved_cmdline(): size is an unsigned long long from read8().
When size == ULLONG_MAX, size + 1 overflows to 0 the same way.

In both cases, do_read(buf, size) then attempts to read the full,
unwrapped size into the tiny allocated buffer, a heap buffer
overflow.

This was previously masked by do_read()'s size parameter being
'int': passing these values truncated them, which the read()
syscall's own boundary checks rejected before any data was read.
Fixing that truncation (widening do_read() to size_t) is correct
on its own, but it removes this accidental protection and exposes
the pre-existing missing bounds check in both functions.

Reject the one value that causes the overflow before it's used, in
each function.

Signed-off-by: Tanushree Shah <redacted>
---
 tools/perf/util/trace-event-read.c | 11 +++++++++++
 1 file changed, 11 insertions(+)
diff --git a/tools/perf/util/trace-event-read.c b/tools/perf/util/trace-event-read.c
index 52ed496d92c3..53f1920c3fcb 100644
--- a/tools/perf/util/trace-event-read.c
+++ b/tools/perf/util/trace-event-read.c
@@ -15,6 +15,7 @@
 #include <fcntl.h>
 #include <unistd.h>
 #include <errno.h>
+#include <limits.h>
 
 #include "trace-event.h"
 #include "debug.h"
@@ -180,6 +181,11 @@ static int read_ftrace_printk(struct tep_handle *pevent)
 	if (!size)
 		return 0;
 
+	if (size == UINT_MAX) {
+		pr_debug("invalid ftrace printk size\n");
+		return -1;
+	}
+
 	buf = malloc(size + 1);
 	if (buf == NULL)
 		return -1;
@@ -357,6 +363,11 @@ static int read_saved_cmdline(struct tep_handle *pevent)
 	if (!size)
 		return 0;
 
+	if (size == ULLONG_MAX) {
+		pr_debug("invalid saved cmdline size");
+		return -1;
+	}
+
 	buf = malloc(size + 1);
 	if (buf == NULL) {
 		pr_debug("memory allocation failure\n");
-- 
2.47.3

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