[PATCH 04/13] platform/x86: hp-bioscfg: fix 16-byte heap overflow for empty auth token

Muhammad Bilal <[email protected]> Mon, 3 Aug 2026 19:30:27 +0500
Newsgroups org.kernel.vger.platform-driver-x86,org.kernel.vger.linux-kernel,org.kernel.vger.stable
Message-ID <[email protected]>
hp_calculate_security_buffer() special-cases an empty authentication
string and returns a fixed 4 bytes (sizeof(u16) * 2). But
hp_populate_security_buffer() does not special-case that same input:
for any authentication string that does not start with BEAM_PREFIX,
including the empty string, it always builds "UTF_PREFIX +
authentication" and converts the result to UTF-16, writing a 2-byte
length header plus 2 bytes per character of "<utf-16/>" (9 characters),
20 bytes total, regardless of how long "authentication" itself is.

The caller, hp_set_attribute(), sizes its kmalloc() buffer using
hp_calculate_security_buffer()'s return value, so for an empty
authentication token it allocates 4 bytes for the security area but
hp_populate_security_buffer() then writes 20 bytes into it, a 16-byte
heap buffer overflow.

The authentication token used here is the current admin/setup
password, which is an empty string by default until one is
configured. Any write to a writable BIOS attribute while no admin
password has been set reaches this path.

Fix by removing the special-case short return for an empty string in
hp_calculate_security_buffer() and letting the normal formula run,
which already accounts for the UTF_PREFIX correctly for the non-empty
case; for an empty string this naturally yields the same 20 bytes
that hp_populate_security_buffer() writes.

Fixes: b2715aa2e135 ("platform/x86: hp-bioscfg: spmobj-attributes")
Cc: [email protected]
Signed-off-by: Muhammad Bilal <[email protected]>
---
 drivers/platform/x86/hp/hp-bioscfg/spmobj-attributes.c | 2 +-
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/drivers/platform/x86/hp/hp-bioscfg/spmobj-attributes.c b/drivers/platform/x86/hp/hp-bioscfg/spmobj-attributes.c
index 4d94e48c1a4c..2d4a3720f80c 100644
--- a/drivers/platform/x86/hp/hp-bioscfg/spmobj-attributes.c
+++ b/drivers/platform/x86/hp/hp-bioscfg/spmobj-attributes.c
@@ -48,7 +48,7 @@ size_t hp_calculate_security_buffer(const char *authentication)
 
 	authlen = strlen(authentication);
 	if (!authlen)
-		return sizeof(u16) * 2;
+		return sizeof(u16) + strlen(UTF_PREFIX) * sizeof(u16);
 
 	size = sizeof(u16) + authlen * sizeof(u16);
 	if (!strstarts(authentication, BEAM_PREFIX))
-- 
2.55.0