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 <keescook@chromium.org>
Cc: Joe Perches <joe@perches.com>
Cc: Tetsuo Handa <penguin-kernel@I-love.SAKURA.ne.jp>
Cc: David Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

1 files changed, 9 insertions, 11 deletions

diff --git a/lib/vsprintf.c b/lib/vsprintf.c
index 48586ac..10909c5 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;
 		}