Skip to contentSkip to conversation

printf.3: Prevent signed integer overflow in example

PATCH In review Tobias Stoeckmann 2 participants 2 messages May 21, 2020 – May 25, 2020 Man-pages: manual pages for Linux -- Sections 2, 3, 4, 5, and 7

lore
Share & tools
lore
#0 lore raw

PATCH 1/1 printf.3: Prevent signed integer overflow in example

The function make_message illustrates how to use vsnprintf to determine the required amount of memory for a specific format and its arguments.

If make_message is called with a format which will use exactly INT_MAX characters (excluding '\0'), then the size++ calculation will overflow the signed integer "size", which is an undefined behaviour in C.

Since malloc and vsnprintf rightfully take a size_t argument, I decided to use a size_t variable for size calculation. Therefore, this patched code uses variables of the same data types as expected by function arguments.

Proof of concept (tested on Linux/glibc amd64):

int main() { make_message("%647s%2147483000s", "", ""); }

If the code is compiled with address sanitizer (gcc -fsanitize=address) you can see the following line, assuming that a signed integer overflow simply leads to INT_MIN:

==3094==WARNING: AddressSanitizer failed to allocate 0xffffffff80000000 bytes

---
 man3/printf.3 | 15 +++++++++------
 1 file changed, 9 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)
man3/printf.3 +9 -6
index 50e136ba6..827d9cbae 100644
@@ -1132,29 +1132,32 @@ To allocate a sufficiently large string and print into it
 char *
 make_message(const char *fmt, ...)
 {
-    int size = 0;
+    int n = 0;
+    size_t size = 0;
     char *p = NULL;
     va_list ap;
 
     /* Determine required size */
 
     va_start(ap, fmt);
-    size = vsnprintf(p, size, fmt, ap);
+    n = vsnprintf(p, size, fmt, ap);
     va_end(ap);
 
-    if (size < 0)
+    if (n < 0)
         return NULL;
 
-    size++;             /* For '\e0' */
+    /* One extra byte for '\e0' */
+
+    size = (size_t) n + 1;
     p = malloc(size);
     if (p == NULL)
         return NULL;
 
     va_start(ap, fmt);
-    size = vsnprintf(p, size, fmt, ap);
+    n = vsnprintf(p, size, fmt, ap);
     va_end(ap);
 
-    if (size < 0) {
+    if (n < 0) {
         free(p);
         return NULL;
     }
Signature · 1 line
2.26.2
#1 lore raw

Tobias,

Quoted 14 lines · Tobias Stoeckmann

The function make_message illustrates how to use vsnprintf to determine the required amount of memory for a specific format and its arguments.

If make_message is called with a format which will use exactly INT_MAX characters (excluding '\0'), then the size++ calculation will overflow the signed integer "size", which is an undefined behaviour in C.

Since malloc and vsnprintf rightfully take a size_t argument, I decided to use a size_t variable for size calculation. Therefore, this patched code uses variables of the same data types as expected by function arguments.

Proof of concept (tested on Linux/glibc amd64):

Quoted 7 lines

int main() { make_message("%647s%2147483000s", "", ""); }

If the code is compiled with address sanitizer (gcc -fsanitize=address) you can see the following line, assuming that a signed integer overflow simply leads to INT_MIN:

==3094==WARNING: AddressSanitizer failed to allocate 0xffffffff80000000 bytes

Thanks for the nicely documented patch. Applied.

Cheers,

Michael

Quoted 48 lines
---
 man3/printf.3 | 15 +++++++++------
 1 file changed, 9 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)
man3/printf.3 +9 -6
index 50e136ba6..827d9cbae 100644
@@ -1132,29 +1132,32 @@ To allocate a sufficiently large string and print into it
 char *
 make_message(const char *fmt, ...)
 {
-    int size = 0;
+    int n = 0;
+    size_t size = 0;
     char *p = NULL;
     va_list ap;
 
     /* Determine required size */
 
     va_start(ap, fmt);
-    size = vsnprintf(p, size, fmt, ap);
+    n = vsnprintf(p, size, fmt, ap);
     va_end(ap);
 
-    if (size < 0)
+    if (n < 0)
         return NULL;
 
-    size++;             /* For '\e0' */
+    /* One extra byte for '\e0' */
+
+    size = (size_t) n + 1;
     p = malloc(size);
     if (p == NULL)
         return NULL;
 
     va_start(ap, fmt);
-    size = vsnprintf(p, size, fmt, ap);
+    n = vsnprintf(p, size, fmt, ap);
     va_end(ap);
 
-    if (size < 0) {
+    if (n < 0) {
         free(p);
         return NULL;
     }
Signature · 3 lines
Michael Kerrisk
Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/
Linux/UNIX System Programming Training: http://man7.org/training/