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uglify kill_pid_info() to fix kill() vs exec() race

PATCH New Oleg Nesterov 1 participant 1 message Dec 7, 2007

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PATCH 1/2 uglify kill_pid_info() to fix kill() vs exec() race

kill_pid_info()->pid_task() could be the old leader of the execing process. In that case it is possible that the leader will be released before we take siglock. This means that kill_pid_info() (and thus sys_kill()) can return a false -ESRCH.

Change the code to retry when lock_task_sighand() fails. The endless loop is not possible, __exit_signal() both clears ->sighand and does detach_pid().

kernel/signal.c renamed from kernel/signal.c~1_kill_exec_race +12 -3
@@ -1049,17 +1049,26 @@ int kill_pgrp_info(int sig, struct sigin
 
 int kill_pid_info(int sig, struct siginfo *info, struct pid *pid)
 {
-	int error;
+	int error = -ESRCH;
 	struct task_struct *p;
 
 	rcu_read_lock();
 	if (unlikely(sig_needs_tasklist(sig)))
 		read_lock(&tasklist_lock);
 
+retry:
 	p = pid_task(pid, PIDTYPE_PID);
-	error = -ESRCH;
-	if (p)
+	if (p) {
 		error = group_send_sig_info(sig, info, p);
+		if (unlikely(error == -ESRCH))
+			/*
+			 * The task was unhashed in between, try again.
+			 * If it is dead, pid_task() will return NULL,
+			 * if we race with de_thread() it will find the
+			 * new leader.
+			 */
+			goto retry;
+	}
 
 	if (unlikely(sig_needs_tasklist(sig)))
 		read_unlock(&tasklist_lock);