Re: [PATCH net] sctp: validate the body of a STALE_COOKIE error before reading it

Xiang Mei <[email protected]> Sun, 5 Jul 2026 15:29:40 -0700
Newsgroups org.kernel.vger.linux-sctp,org.kernel.vger.linux-kernel,org.kernel.vger.netdev
Message-ID <CAPpSM+SaxP+HOA1aRBdHCTFFN-2q8oPhmN59J-VPV2F5NwJyAA@mail.gmail.com>
Thanks for the reminder. I didn't notice that Weiming has patched it.
Sorry about that.

Xiang

On Sun, Jul 5, 2026 at 12:13 PM Xin Long <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> On Sat, Jul 4, 2026 at 8:31 PM Xiang Mei <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > sctp_sf_do_5_2_6_stale() reads the 32-bit Measure of Staleness that
> > follows the error header:
> >
> >         stale = ntohl(*(__be32 *)((u8 *)err + sizeof(*err)));
> >
> > without checking that the STALE_COOKIE cause actually carries that
> > 4-byte body. sctp_walk_errors() in the caller only requires
> > err->length >= sizeof(struct sctp_errhdr), so a peer can send an 8-byte
> > ERROR chunk whose sole STALE_COOKIE cause has length == 4 and no body.
> > It passes sctp_chunk_length_valid() (>= 8) and the error walk, yet the
> > staleness read reaches past the validated cause.
> >
> > When that is the only chunk in the packet the cause ends exactly at
> > skb_tail (sctp_inq_pop() discards only when chunk_end > skb_tail), so
> > the read stays in-bounds of the skb head slab object but past the packet
> > data. The value is folded into the COOKIE_PRESERVATIVE parameter of the
> > retransmitted INIT and reflected to the peer, leaking adjacent kernel
> > slab bytes.
> >
> > Discard the chunk when the staleness field falls outside the validated
> > chunk data.
> >
> > Fixes: 1da177e4c3f4 ("Linux-2.6.12-rc2")
> > Reported-by: Weiming Shi <[email protected]>
> > Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-4-8
> > Signed-off-by: Xiang Mei <[email protected]>
> > ---
> >  net/sctp/sm_statefuns.c | 3 +++
> >  1 file changed, 3 insertions(+)
> >
> > diff --git a/net/sctp/sm_statefuns.c b/net/sctp/sm_statefuns.c
> > index d23d935e128e..e4b4b63162cf 100644
> > --- a/net/sctp/sm_statefuns.c
> > +++ b/net/sctp/sm_statefuns.c
> > @@ -2592,6 +2592,9 @@ static enum sctp_disposition sctp_sf_do_5_2_6_stale(
> >
> >         err = (struct sctp_errhdr *)(chunk->skb->data);
> >
> > +       if ((u8 *)err + sizeof(*err) + sizeof(__be32) > chunk->chunk_end)
> > +               return sctp_sf_pdiscard(net, ep, asoc, type, arg, commands);
> > +
> >         /* When calculating the time extension, an implementation
> >          * SHOULD use the RTT information measured based on the
> >          * previous COOKIE ECHO / ERROR exchange, and should add no
> > --
> > 2.43.0
> >
>
> I think this is a dup of
> https://lore.kernel.org/netdev/[email protected]/.
>
> Thanks.