Re: [PATCH] libio: Free backup area when it not required (BZ#22415)

[Florian Weimer <fweimer at redhat dot com>]

On 12/14/2017 04:36 PM, Adhemerval Zanella wrote:
> On 14/12/2017 09:57, Florian Weimer wrote:
> > On 11/29/2017 02:39 PM, Adhemerval Zanella wrote:
> > > Some libio operations fail to correctly free the backup area (created
> > > by_IO_{w}default_pbackfail on unget{w}c) resulting in either invalid
> > > buffer free operations or memory leaks.
> > >
> > > For instance, on the example provided by BZ#22415 a following
> > > fputc after a fseek to rewind the stream issues an invalid free on
> > > the buffer.
> >
> > Do we have to treat this as a security bug?  I don't think so, but I'd still like a second opinion.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Florian
>
> I am not well versed in exploit crafting, so how do we usually handle
> invalid free on user provided buffers?

I'm not sure we have had many of those, so that we have a portfolio of 
bugs to look at for guidance.

Do you think it is likely that the conditions to trigger this bug would 
only hold for one set of input data, and not for another?  So that the 
invalid free only happens some of the time, and could be triggered by 
crafted input data?  Obviously, this depends a lot on how these 
functions are used, but it looks not very likely to me that there are 
applications out there which have this kind of input dependency here.

Thanks,
Florian