Re: [PATCH 2/4] virtio_input: validate device-reported multitouch slot count

[ Just realized that CC was dropped in the email I was replying to, so
  restoring and resending... ]

On Thu, Jul 16, 2026 at 10:28:36AM -0700, Dmitry Torokhov wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 16, 2026 at 12:34:57PM +0200, Hari Mishal wrote:
> > > What is the failure mode if we keep the ABS_MT_SLOT capability? Does the
> > > kernel crash? And if this can cause crash then we should fix
> > > input_mt_init_slots() to reject requests for 0 slots with -EINVAL.
> > >
> > 
> > No, it doesn't crash. I think every place in the input core that touches
> > dev->mt guards against it being NULL: input_handle_abs_event() and
> > the mt_slots check in input.c, and evdev's EVIOCGMTSLOTS ioctl
> > handler all explicitly check for NULL and degrade cleanly instead of
> > dereferencing. From my understanding, the worst case is what the
> > original commit message already covers: the device advertises
> > multitouch support it can't back.
> 
> So what? I still do not see the problem. Let's say I have a device that
> properly supports multitouch and has slots, but then never sends any
> events because firmware is buggy. How would that affect anything?
> 
> If there is no crash that I would leave the driver alone.
> 
> And we need to remember that we are dealing with a hypervisor here that
> normally had higher level of trust than the VM. If it messes up we do
> not have to clean up after it. This scenario is different from user
> attaching a malicious USB device to their system and getting owned.
> 
> Thanks.
> 

-- 
Dmitry