Vulnerability: The n_tty_write function in drivers/tty/n_tty.c in the Linux kernel through 3.14.3 does not properly manage tty driver access in the "LECHO & !OPOST" case, which allows local users to cause a denial of service (memory corruption and system crash) or gain privileges by triggering a race condition involving read and write operations with long strings.
Vulnerability ID: CVE-2014-0196
CWE: CWE-362
Severity score: 10
Project: https://github.com/torvalds/linux
Published: 2014-05-07
File: drivers/tty/n_tty.c
Commit message: n_tty: Fix n_tty_write crash when echoing in raw mode

The tty atomic_write_lock does not provide an exclusion guarantee for
the tty driver if the termios settings are LECHO & !OPOST.  And since
it is unexpected and not allowed to call TTY buffer helpers like
tty_insert_flip_string concurrently, this may lead to crashes when
concurrect writers call pty_write. In that case the following two
writers:
* the ECHOing from a workqueue and
* pty_write from the process
race and can overflow the corresponding TTY buffer like follows.

If we look into tty_insert_flip_string_fixed_flag, there is:
  int space = __tty_buffer_request_room(port, goal, flags);
  struct tty_buffer *tb = port->buf.tail;
  ...
  memcpy(char_buf_ptr(tb, tb->used), chars, space);
  ...
  tb->used += space;

so the race of the two can result in something like this:
              A                                B
__tty_buffer_request_room
                                  __tty_buffer_request_room
memcpy(buf(tb->used), ...)
tb->used += space;
                                  memcpy(buf(tb->used), ...) ->BOOM

B's memcpy is past the tty_buffer due to the previous A's tb->used
increment.

Since the N_TTY line discipline input processing can output
concurrently with a tty write, obtain the N_TTY ldisc output_lock to
serialize echo output with normal tty writes.  This ensures the tty
buffer helper tty_insert_flip_string is not called concurrently and
everything is fine.

Note that this is nicely reproducible by an ordinary user using
forkpty and some setup around that (raw termios + ECHO). And it is
present in kernels at least after commit
d945cb9cce20ac7143c2de8d88b187f62db99bdc (pty: Rework the pty layer to
use the normal buffering logic) in 2.6.31-rc3.

js: add more info to the commit log
js: switch to bool
js: lock unconditionally
js: lock only the tty->ops->write call

References: CVE-2014-0196
Reported-and-tested-by: Jiri Slaby <jslaby@suse.cz>
Signed-off-by: Peter Hurley <peter@hurleysoftware.com>
Signed-off-by: Jiri Slaby <jslaby@suse.cz>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
Cc: <stable@vger.kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Commit author: Peter Hurley

Vulnerable version (before fix):
 static ssize_t n_tty_write(struct tty_struct *tty, struct file *file, 			if (tty->ops->flush_chars) 				tty->ops->flush_chars(tty); 		} else { 			while (nr > 0) { 				c = tty->ops->write(tty, b, nr); 				if (c < 0) { 					retval = c; 					goto break_out;

Fixed version (after fix):
 static ssize_t n_tty_write(struct tty_struct *tty, struct file *file, 			if (tty->ops->flush_chars) 				tty->ops->flush_chars(tty); 		} else { 			struct n_tty_data *ldata = tty->disc_data;  			while (nr > 0) { 				mutex_lock(&ldata->output_lock); 				c = tty->ops->write(tty, b, nr); 				mutex_unlock(&ldata->output_lock); 				if (c < 0) { 					retval = c; 					goto break_out;

Patch:
patch: @@ -2353,8 +2353,12 @@ static ssize_t n_tty_write(struct tty_struct *tty, struct file *file,
 			if (tty->ops->flush_chars)
 				tty->ops->flush_chars(tty);
 		} else {
+			struct n_tty_data *ldata = tty->disc_data;
+
 			while (nr > 0) {
+				mutex_lock(&ldata->output_lock);
 				c = tty->ops->write(tty, b, nr);
+				mutex_unlock(&ldata->output_lock);
 				if (c < 0) {
 					retval = c;
 					goto break_out;
path: drivers/tty/n_tty.c