CVE-2010-5328 (published 2017-02-06T06:59Z)

include/linux/init_task.h in the Linux kernel before 2.6.35 does not prevent signals with a process group ID of zero from reaching the swapper process, which allows local users to cause a denial of service (system crash) by leveraging access to this process group.

Severity: MEDIUM
CVSS v2 base score: 4.9 (AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:C)
CVSS v3 base score: 5.5, MEDIUM (CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H)

Weakness information:
cwe_id: CWE-20
cwe_name: Improper Input Validation
description: The product receives input or data, but it does
        not validate or incorrectly validates that the input has the
        properties that are required to process the data safely and
        correctly.
extended_description: 
	   Input validation is a frequently-used technique
	   for checking potentially dangerous inputs in order to
	   ensure that the inputs are safe for processing within the
	   code, or when communicating with other components.  When
	   software does not validate input properly, an attacker is
	   able to craft the input in a form that is not expected by
	   the rest of the application. This will lead to parts of the
	   system receiving unintended input, which may result in
	   altered control flow, arbitrary control of a resource, or
	   arbitrary code execution.
	   Input validation is not the only technique for
	   processing input, however.  Other techniques attempt to
	   transform potentially-dangerous input into something safe, such
	   as filtering (CWE-790) - which attempts to remove dangerous
	   inputs - or encoding/escaping (CWE-116), which attempts to
	   ensure that the input is not misinterpreted when it is included
	   in output to another component. Other techniques exist as well
	   (see CWE-138 for more examples.)
	   Input validation can be applied to:
	   
	     raw data - strings, numbers, parameters, file contents, etc.
	     metadata - information about the raw data, such as headers or size
	   
	   Data can be simple or structured.  Structured data
	   can be composed of many nested layers, composed of
	   combinations of metadata and raw data, with other simple or
	   structured data.
	   Many properties of raw data or metadata may need
	   to be validated upon entry into the code, such
	   as:
	   
	     specified quantities such as size, length, frequency, price, rate, number of operations, time, etc.
	     implied or derived quantities, such as the actual size of a file instead of a specified size
	     indexes, offsets, or positions into more complex data structures
	     symbolic keys or other elements into hash tables, associative arrays, etc.
	     well-formedness, i.e. syntactic correctness - compliance with expected syntax 
	     lexical token correctness - compliance with rules for what is treated as a token
	     specified or derived type - the actual type of the input (or what the input appears to be)
	     consistency - between individual data elements, between raw data and metadata, between references, etc.
	     conformance to domain-specific rules, e.g. business logic 
	     equivalence - ensuring that equivalent inputs are treated the same
	     authenticity, ownership, or other attestations about the input, e.g. a cryptographic signature to prove the source of the data
	   
	   Implied or derived properties of data must often
	   be calculated or inferred by the code itself.  Errors in
	   deriving properties may be considered a contributing factor
	   to improper input validation.
	   
	   Note that "input validation" has very different
	   meanings to different people, or within different
	   classification schemes.  Caution must be used when
	   referencing this CWE entry or mapping to it.  For example,
	   some weaknesses might involve inadvertently giving control
	   to an attacker over an input when they should not be able
	   to provide an input at all, but sometimes this is referred
	   to as input validation.
	   Finally, it is important to emphasize that the
	   distinctions between input validation and output escaping
	   are often blurred, and developers must be careful to
	   understand the difference, including how input validation
	   is not always sufficient to prevent vulnerabilities,
	   especially when less stringent data types must be
	   supported, such as free-form text. Consider a SQL injection
	   scenario in which a person's last name is inserted into a
	   query. The name "O'Reilly" would likely pass the validation
	   step since it is a common last name in the English
	   language. However, this valid name cannot be directly
	   inserted into the database because it contains the "'"
	   apostrophe character, which would need to be escaped or
	   otherwise transformed. In this case, removing the
	   apostrophe might reduce the risk of SQL injection, but it
	   would produce incorrect behavior because the wrong name
	   would be recorded.
       
         

Fix information:
repo_url: https://github.com/torvalds/linux
commit_details: repo_url: https://github.com/torvalds/linux
author: Oleg Nesterov
author_date: 2010-05-26 14:44:08-07:00
msg: INIT_TASK() should initialize ->thread_group list

The trivial /sbin/init doing

	int main(void)
	{
		kill(0, SIGKILL)
	}

crashes the kernel.

This happens because __kill_pgrp_info(init_struct_pid) also sends SIGKILL
to the swapper process which runs with the uninitialized ->thread_group.

Change INIT_TASK() to initialize ->thread_group properly.

Note: the real problem is that the swapper process must not be visible to
signals, see the next patch. But this change is right anyway and fixes
the crash.

Reported-and-tested-by: Mathias Krause <mathias.krause@secunet.com>
Signed-off-by: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com>
Cc: Cedric Le Goater <clg@fr.ibm.com>
Cc: Dave Hansen <haveblue@us.ibm.com>
Cc: Eric Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com>
Cc: Herbert Poetzl <herbert@13thfloor.at>
Cc: Mathias Krause <Mathias.Krause@secunet.com>
Acked-by: Roland McGrath <roland@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Serge Hallyn <serue@us.ibm.com>
Acked-by: Sukadev Bhattiprolu <sukadev@us.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
repository: repo_url: https://github.com/torvalds/linux
repo_name: torvalds/linux
description: Linux kernel source tree
repo_language: C
owner: torvalds
file_changes: filename: init_task.h
change_type: ModificationType.MODIFY
diff: @@ -163,6 +163,7 @@ extern struct cred init_cred;
 		[PIDTYPE_PGID] = INIT_PID_LINK(PIDTYPE_PGID),		\
 		[PIDTYPE_SID]  = INIT_PID_LINK(PIDTYPE_SID),		\
 	},								\
+	.thread_group	= LIST_HEAD_INIT(tsk.thread_group),		\
 	.dirties = INIT_PROP_LOCAL_SINGLE(dirties),			\
 	INIT_IDS							\
 	INIT_PERF_EVENTS(tsk)						\

programming_language: C
repo_url: https://github.com/torvalds/linux
commit_details: repo_url: https://github.com/torvalds/linux
author: Oleg Nesterov
author_date: 2010-05-26 14:44:10-07:00
msg: pids: init_struct_pid.tasks should never see the swapper process

"statically initialize struct pid for swapper" commit 820e45db says:

	Statically initialize a struct pid for the swapper process (pid_t == 0)
	and attach it to init_task.  This is needed so task_pid(), task_pgrp()
	and task_session() interfaces work on the swapper process also.

OK, but:

	- it doesn't make sense to add init_task.pids[].node into
	  init_struct_pid.tasks[], and in fact this just wrong.

	  idle threads are special, they shouldn't be visible on any
	  global list. In particular do_each_pid_task(init_struct_pid)
	  shouldn't see swapper.

	  This is the actual reason why kill(0, SIGKILL) from /sbin/init
	  (which starts with 0,0 special pids) crashes the kernel. The
	  signal sent to pgid/sid == 0 must never see idle threads, even
	  if the previous patch fixed the crash itself.

	- we have other idle threads running on the non-boot CPUs, see
	  the next patch.

Change INIT_STRUCT_PID/INIT_PID_LINK to create the empty/unhashed
hlist_head/hlist_node. Like any other idle thread swapper can never exit,
so detach_pid()->__hlist_del() is not possible, but we could change
INIT_PID_LINK() to set pprev = &next if needed.

All we need is the valid swapper->pids[].pid == &init_struct_pid.

Reported-by: Mathias Krause <mathias.krause@secunet.com>
Signed-off-by: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com>
Cc: Cedric Le Goater <clg@fr.ibm.com>
Cc: Dave Hansen <haveblue@us.ibm.com>
Cc: Eric Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com>
Cc: Herbert Poetzl <herbert@13thfloor.at>
Cc: Mathias Krause <Mathias.Krause@secunet.com>
Acked-by: Roland McGrath <roland@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Serge Hallyn <serue@us.ibm.com>
Cc: Sukadev Bhattiprolu <sukadev@us.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
repository: repo_url: https://github.com/torvalds/linux
repo_name: torvalds/linux
description: Linux kernel source tree
repo_language: C
owner: torvalds
file_changes: filename: init_task.h
change_type: ModificationType.MODIFY
diff: @@ -45,9 +45,9 @@ extern struct group_info init_groups;
 #define INIT_STRUCT_PID {						\
 	.count 		= ATOMIC_INIT(1),				\
 	.tasks		= {						\
-		{ .first = &init_task.pids[PIDTYPE_PID].node },		\
-		{ .first = &init_task.pids[PIDTYPE_PGID].node },	\
-		{ .first = &init_task.pids[PIDTYPE_SID].node },		\
+		{ .first = NULL },					\
+		{ .first = NULL },					\
+		{ .first = NULL },					\
 	},								\
 	.level		= 0,						\
 	.numbers	= { {						\
@@ -61,7 +61,7 @@ extern struct group_info init_groups;
 {								\
 	.node = {						\
 		.next = NULL,					\
-		.pprev = &init_struct_pid.tasks[type].first,	\
+		.pprev = NULL,					\
 	},							\
 	.pid = &init_struct_pid,				\
 }

programming_language: C
repo_url: https://github.com/torvalds/linux
commit_details: repo_url: https://github.com/torvalds/linux
author: Oleg Nesterov
author_date: 2010-05-26 14:44:11-07:00
msg: pids: fix fork_idle() to setup ->pids correctly

copy_process(pid => &init_struct_pid) doesn't do attach_pid/etc.

It shouldn't, but this means that the idle threads run with the wrong
pids copied from the caller's task_struct. In x86 case the caller is
either kernel_init() thread or keventd.

In particular, this means that after the series of cpu_up/cpu_down an
idle thread (which never exits) can run with .pid pointing to nowhere.

Change fork_idle() to initialize idle->pids[] correctly. We only set
.pid = &init_struct_pid but do not add .node to list, INIT_TASK() does
the same for the boot-cpu idle thread (swapper).

Signed-off-by: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com>
Cc: Cedric Le Goater <clg@fr.ibm.com>
Cc: Dave Hansen <haveblue@us.ibm.com>
Cc: Eric Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com>
Cc: Herbert Poetzl <herbert@13thfloor.at>
Cc: Mathias Krause <Mathias.Krause@secunet.com>
Acked-by: Roland McGrath <roland@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Serge Hallyn <serue@us.ibm.com>
Cc: Sukadev Bhattiprolu <sukadev@us.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
repository: repo_url: https://github.com/torvalds/linux
repo_name: torvalds/linux
description: Linux kernel source tree
repo_language: C
owner: torvalds
file_changes: filename: fork.c
change_type: ModificationType.MODIFY
diff: @@ -1338,6 +1338,16 @@ noinline struct pt_regs * __cpuinit __attribute__((weak)) idle_regs(struct pt_re
 	return regs;
 }
 
+static inline void init_idle_pids(struct pid_link *links)
+{
+	enum pid_type type;
+
+	for (type = PIDTYPE_PID; type < PIDTYPE_MAX; ++type) {
+		INIT_HLIST_NODE(&links[type].node); /* not really needed */
+		links[type].pid = &init_struct_pid;
+	}
+}
+
 struct task_struct * __cpuinit fork_idle(int cpu)
 {
 	struct task_struct *task;
@@ -1345,8 +1355,10 @@ struct task_struct * __cpuinit fork_idle(int cpu)
 
 	task = copy_process(CLONE_VM, 0, idle_regs(&regs), 0, NULL,
 			    &init_struct_pid, 0);
-	if (!IS_ERR(task))
+	if (!IS_ERR(task)) {
+		init_idle_pids(task->pids);
 		init_idle(task, cpu);
+	}
 
 	return task;
 }

programming_language: C