Re: [PATCH] fix use after free in netlink_kernel_create()

On Sun, 13 Aug 2006 13:52:58 +0200
Patrick McHardy [off-list ref] wrote:

Akinobu Mita wrote:

quoted

This patch invalidates nl_table by setting NULL when netlink
initialization failed. Otherwise netlink_kernel_create() would
access nl_table which has already been freed.

Quite a few users of netlink_kernel_create will panic when creating
the socket fails (rtnetlink for example, which is always present),
so you might as well call panic here directly.

That's a bit lame.  Panicing at do_initcalls() time is OK (something is
seriously screwed anyway) but we usually try to handle the ENOMEM nicely if
it happens at modprobe-time.

(It's all pretty theoretical anyway - reasonable-sized GFP_KERNEL
allocations don't fail).