From 9196436ab2f713b823a2ba2024cb69f40b2f54a5 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Kees Cook Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 14:31:58 -0800 Subject: [PATCH] vsprintf: ignore %n again This ignores %n in printf again, as was originally documented. Implementing %n poses a greater security risk than utility, so it should stay ignored. To help anyone attempting to use %n, a warning will be emitted if it is encountered. Based on an earlier patch by Joe Perches. Because %n was designed to write to pointers on the stack, it has been frequently used as an attack vector when bugs are found that leak user-controlled strings into functions that ultimately process format strings. While this class of bug can still be turned into an information leak, removing %n eliminates the common method of elevating such a bug into an arbitrary kernel memory writing primitive, significantly reducing the danger of this class of bug. For seq_file users that need to know the length of a written string for padding, please see seq_setwidth() and seq_pad() instead. Signed-off-by: Kees Cook Cc: Joe Perches Cc: Tetsuo Handa Cc: David Miller Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds --- lib/vsprintf.c | 20 +++++++++----------- 1 file changed, 9 insertions(+), 11 deletions(-) diff --git a/lib/vsprintf.c b/lib/vsprintf.c index 48586ac3a62e..10909c571494 100644 --- a/lib/vsprintf.c +++ b/lib/vsprintf.c @@ -1712,18 +1712,16 @@ int vsnprintf(char *buf, size_t size, const char *fmt, va_list args) break; case FORMAT_TYPE_NRCHARS: { - u8 qualifier = spec.qualifier; + /* + * Since %n poses a greater security risk than + * utility, ignore %n and skip its argument. + */ + void *skip_arg; - if (qualifier == 'l') { - long *ip = va_arg(args, long *); - *ip = (str - buf); - } else if (_tolower(qualifier) == 'z') { - size_t *ip = va_arg(args, size_t *); - *ip = (str - buf); - } else { - int *ip = va_arg(args, int *); - *ip = (str - buf); - } + WARN_ONCE(1, "Please remove ignored %%n in '%s'\n", + old_fmt); + + skip_arg = va_arg(args, void *); break; } -- 2.30.2