From: Eric Biggers <ebiggers@xxxxxxxxxx> Commit 7c051267931a ("mm, fork: make dup_mmap wait for mmap_sem for write killable") made it possible to kill a forking task while it is waiting to acquire its ->mmap_sem for write, in dup_mmap(). However, it was overlooked that this introduced an new error path before a reference is taken on the mm_struct's ->exe_file. Since the ->exe_file of the new mm_struct was already set to the old ->exe_file by the memcpy() in dup_mm(), it was possible for the mmput() in the error path of dup_mm() to drop a reference to ->exe_file which was never taken. This caused the struct file to later be freed prematurely. Fix it by updating mm_init() to NULL out the ->exe_file, in the same place it clears other things like the list of mmaps. This bug was found by syzkaller. It can be reproduced using the following C program: #define _GNU_SOURCE #include <pthread.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <sys/mman.h> #include <sys/syscall.h> #include <sys/wait.h> #include <unistd.h> static void *mmap_thread(void *_arg) { for (;;) { mmap(NULL, 0x1000000, PROT_READ, MAP_POPULATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS|MAP_PRIVATE, -1, 0); } } static void *fork_thread(void *_arg) { usleep(rand() % 10000); fork(); } int main(void) { fork(); fork(); fork(); for (;;) { if (fork() == 0) { pthread_t t; pthread_create(&t, NULL, mmap_thread, NULL); pthread_create(&t, NULL, fork_thread, NULL); usleep(rand() % 10000); syscall(__NR_exit_group, 0); } wait(NULL); } } No special kernel config options are needed. It usually causes a NULL pointer dereference in __remove_shared_vm_struct() during exit, or in dup_mmap() (which is usually inlined into copy_process()) during fork. Both are due to a vm_area_struct's ->vm_file being used after it's already been freed. Fixes: 7c051267931a ("mm, fork: make dup_mmap wait for mmap_sem for write killable") Google-Bug-Id: 64772007 Cc: Dmitry Vyukov <dvyukov@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Konstantin Khlebnikov <koct9i@xxxxxxxxx> Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@xxxxxxxx> Cc: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@xxxxxxx> Cc: stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx # v4.7+ Signed-off-by: Eric Biggers <ebiggers@xxxxxxxxxx> --- kernel/fork.c | 1 + 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+) diff --git a/kernel/fork.c b/kernel/fork.c index e075b7780421..cbbea277b3fb 100644 --- a/kernel/fork.c +++ b/kernel/fork.c @@ -806,6 +806,7 @@ static struct mm_struct *mm_init(struct mm_struct *mm, struct task_struct *p, mm_init_cpumask(mm); mm_init_aio(mm); mm_init_owner(mm, p); + RCU_INIT_POINTER(mm->exe_file, NULL); mmu_notifier_mm_init(mm); init_tlb_flush_pending(mm); #if defined(CONFIG_TRANSPARENT_HUGEPAGE) && !USE_SPLIT_PMD_PTLOCKS -- 2.14.1.342.g6490525c54-goog