commit 1c3000a67a350c7ac31897cf22ec8e4ddd47d3aa Author: Greg Kroah-Hartman Date: Thu Feb 21 10:05:05 2013 -0800 3.4.33 commit ce0030c00f95cf9110d9cdcd41e901e1fb814417 Author: Alexandre SIMON Date: Fri Feb 1 15:31:54 2013 +0100 printk: fix buffer overflow when calling log_prefix function from call_console_drivers This patch corrects a buffer overflow in kernels from 3.0 to 3.4 when calling log_prefix() function from call_console_drivers(). This bug existed in previous releases but has been revealed with commit 162a7e7500f9664636e649ba59defe541b7c2c60 (2.6.39 => 3.0) that made changes about how to allocate memory for early printk buffer (use of memblock_alloc). It disappears with commit 7ff9554bb578ba02166071d2d487b7fc7d860d62 (3.4 => 3.5) that does a refactoring of printk buffer management. In log_prefix(), the access to "p[0]", "p[1]", "p[2]" or "simple_strtoul(&p[1], &endp, 10)" may cause a buffer overflow as this function is called from call_console_drivers by passing "&LOG_BUF(cur_index)" where the index must be masked to do not exceed the buffer's boundary. The trick is to prepare in call_console_drivers() a buffer with the necessary data (PRI field of syslog message) to be safely evaluated in log_prefix(). This patch can be applied to stable kernel branches 3.0.y, 3.2.y and 3.4.y. Without this patch, one can freeze a server running this loop from shell : $ export DUMMY=`cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc '12345AZERTYUIOPQSDFGHJKLMWXCVBNazertyuiopqsdfghjklmwxcvbn' | head -c255` $ while true do ; echo $DUMMY > /dev/kmsg ; done The "server freeze" depends on where memblock_alloc does allocate printk buffer : if the buffer overflow is inside another kernel allocation the problem may not be revealed, else the server may hangs up. Signed-off-by: Alexandre SIMON Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman