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From: Cheng Yongkang <teel4res@gmail.com>
To: Benjamin LaHaise <bcrl@kvack.org>,
	Alexander Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>,
	Christian Brauner <brauner@kernel.org>
Cc: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>,
	linux-aio@kvack.org, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org,
	linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: [BUG] fs/aio: io_setup integer wrap can exhaust global aio quota
Date: Thu, 22 Oct 2026 02:17:48 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20261022091748.3653127-1-teel4res@gmail.com> (raw)

Hi all,

ioctx_alloc() saves the 32-bit nr_events in max_reqs, then doubles
nr_events before checking the ring-size bound.  For
nr_events=0x80000001, the doubled value wraps to 2, so the ring check
passes and aio_setup_ring() builds a one-page/127-slot ring.  The
original 0x80000001 is still stored in ctx->max_reqs and charged to the
global aio_nr quota.

If an administrator has raised fs.aio-max-nr to at least 0x80000001,
an unprivileged process can create that context and make later normal
io_setup() calls fail with -EAGAIN until the wrapped context is
destroyed.

Observed on Linux v7.3, commit
08ab31164c55f20c7a2653de3186ae333470e2c1, with the administrator
raising fs.aio-max-nr to 2147483649 and dropping to uid/gid 65534:

  io_setup(0x80000001): ret=0
  fs.aio-nr:            2147483649
  ring header nr:       127
  ring VMA size:        4096
  io_setup(1):          -EAGAIN while wrapped context alive
  io_destroy():         0
  fs.aio-nr after:      0

The unprivileged io_submit path stopped at the ring's real 127-slot
capacity.

The default fs.aio-max-nr=65536 blocks the path, so this requires the
documented but unusually large administrator configuration.  Under that
configuration it is a system-wide availability failure.

Check the magnitude before doubling, or use a 64-bit intermediate and
charge the actual validated request count.

I found no matching upstream fix or CVE.

The privileged init wrapper and unprivileged PoC are available on
request.

This was found with a multi-agent workflow; the full
quota/ring sequence was reproduced in QEMU.

Thanks,
Cheng Yongkang

                 reply	other threads:[~2026-10-22  9:17 UTC|newest]

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