Drivers that use the start method for netlink dumping rely on dumpit not being called if start fails. For example, ila_xlat.c allocates memory and assigns it to cb->args[0] in its start() function. It might fail to do that and return -ENOMEM instead. However, even when returning an error, dumpit will be called, which, in the example above, quickly dereferences the memory in cb->args[0], which will OOPS the kernel. This is but one example of how this goes wrong. Since start() has always been a function with an int return type, it therefore makes sense to use it properly, rather than ignoring it. This patch thus returns early and does not call dumpit() when start() fails. Signed-off-by: Jason A. Donenfeld <Jason@xxxxxxxxx> Cc: stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx --- net/netlink/af_netlink.c | 7 +++++-- 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/net/netlink/af_netlink.c b/net/netlink/af_netlink.c index 327807731b44..be179876227d 100644 --- a/net/netlink/af_netlink.c +++ b/net/netlink/af_netlink.c @@ -2270,8 +2270,11 @@ int __netlink_dump_start(struct sock *ssk, struct sk_buff *skb, mutex_unlock(nlk->cb_mutex); - if (cb->start) - cb->start(cb); + if (cb->start) { + ret = cb->start(cb); + if (ret) + return ret; + } ret = netlink_dump(sk); sock_put(sk); -- 2.14.1