This is a note to let you know that I've just added the patch titled kcmp: fix standard comparison bug to the 3.16-stable tree which can be found at: http://www.kernel.org/git/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/stable-queue.git;a=summary The filename of the patch is: kcmp-fix-standard-comparison-bug.patch and it can be found in the queue-3.16 subdirectory. If you, or anyone else, feels it should not be added to the stable tree, please let <stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> know about it. >From acbbe6fbb240a927ee1f5994f04d31267d422215 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Rasmus Villemoes <linux@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Date: Tue, 9 Sep 2014 14:51:01 -0700 Subject: kcmp: fix standard comparison bug From: Rasmus Villemoes <linux@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> commit acbbe6fbb240a927ee1f5994f04d31267d422215 upstream. The C operator <= defines a perfectly fine total ordering on the set of values representable in a long. However, unlike its namesake in the integers, it is not translation invariant, meaning that we do not have "b <= c" iff "a+b <= a+c" for all a,b,c. This means that it is always wrong to try to boil down the relationship between two longs to a question about the sign of their difference, because the resulting relation [a LEQ b iff a-b <= 0] is neither anti-symmetric or transitive. The former is due to -LONG_MIN==LONG_MIN (take any two a,b with a-b = LONG_MIN; then a LEQ b and b LEQ a, but a != b). The latter can either be seen observing that x LEQ x+1 for all x, implying x LEQ x+1 LEQ x+2 ... LEQ x-1 LEQ x; or more directly with the simple example a=LONG_MIN, b=0, c=1, for which a-b < 0, b-c < 0, but a-c > 0. Note that it makes absolutely no difference that a transmogrying bijection has been applied before the comparison is done. In fact, had the obfuscation not been done, one could probably not observe the bug (assuming all values being compared always lie in one half of the address space, the mathematical value of a-b is always representable in a long). As it stands, one can easily obtain three file descriptors exhibiting the non-transitivity of kcmp(). Side note 1: I can't see that ensuring the MSB of the multiplier is set serves any purpose other than obfuscating the obfuscating code. Side note 2: #include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <string.h> #include <fcntl.h> #include <unistd.h> #include <assert.h> #include <sys/syscall.h> enum kcmp_type { KCMP_FILE, KCMP_VM, KCMP_FILES, KCMP_FS, KCMP_SIGHAND, KCMP_IO, KCMP_SYSVSEM, KCMP_TYPES, }; pid_t pid; int kcmp(pid_t pid1, pid_t pid2, int type, unsigned long idx1, unsigned long idx2) { return syscall(SYS_kcmp, pid1, pid2, type, idx1, idx2); } int cmp_fd(int fd1, int fd2) { int c = kcmp(pid, pid, KCMP_FILE, fd1, fd2); if (c < 0) { perror("kcmp"); exit(1); } assert(0 <= c && c < 3); return c; } int cmp_fdp(const void *a, const void *b) { static const int normalize[] = {0, -1, 1}; return normalize[cmp_fd(*(int*)a, *(int*)b)]; } #define MAX 100 /* This is plenty; I've seen it trigger for MAX==3 */ int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { int r, s, count = 0; int REL[3] = {0,0,0}; int fd[MAX]; pid = getpid(); while (count < MAX) { r = open("/dev/null", O_RDONLY); if (r < 0) break; fd[count++] = r; } printf("opened %d file descriptors\n", count); for (r = 0; r < count; ++r) { for (s = r+1; s < count; ++s) { REL[cmp_fd(fd[r], fd[s])]++; } } printf("== %d\t< %d\t> %d\n", REL[0], REL[1], REL[2]); qsort(fd, count, sizeof(fd[0]), cmp_fdp); memset(REL, 0, sizeof(REL)); for (r = 0; r < count; ++r) { for (s = r+1; s < count; ++s) { REL[cmp_fd(fd[r], fd[s])]++; } } printf("== %d\t< %d\t> %d\n", REL[0], REL[1], REL[2]); return (REL[0] + REL[2] != 0); } Signed-off-by: Rasmus Villemoes <linux@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Reviewed-by: Cyrill Gorcunov <gorcunov@xxxxxxxxxx> "Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@xxxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- kernel/kcmp.c | 7 ++++--- 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) --- a/kernel/kcmp.c +++ b/kernel/kcmp.c @@ -44,11 +44,12 @@ static long kptr_obfuscate(long v, int t */ static int kcmp_ptr(void *v1, void *v2, enum kcmp_type type) { - long ret; + long t1, t2; - ret = kptr_obfuscate((long)v1, type) - kptr_obfuscate((long)v2, type); + t1 = kptr_obfuscate((long)v1, type); + t2 = kptr_obfuscate((long)v2, type); - return (ret < 0) | ((ret > 0) << 1); + return (t1 < t2) | ((t1 > t2) << 1); } /* The caller must have pinned the task */ Patches currently in stable-queue which might be from linux@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx are queue-3.16/kcmp-fix-standard-comparison-bug.patch -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe stable" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html