[PATCH 0/3] validate_headref: avoid reading uninitialized bytes

[PATCH 0/3] validate_headref: avoid reading uninitialized bytes

[Jeff King]

While looking at read_in_full() callers for a nearby patch series, I
noticed this fairly harmless bug. The first patch fixes it, and the
other two do some cleanups on top.

I'm tempted to say the whole thing ought to just use a strbuf. We
typically only call this function once per program, and git HEAD files
are small enough not to worry about. On the other hand, the point of the
function is to see if this is in fact a git repository. So in the rare
case that we see a file named ".git/HEAD" that's actually a 2GB video
file, we'd prefer to find out after reading only 256 bytes, not the
whole thing.

  [1/3]: validate_headref: NUL-terminate HEAD buffer
  [2/3]: validate_headref: use skip_prefix for symref parsing
  [3/3]: validate_headref: use get_oid_hex for detached HEADs

 path.c | 23 ++++++++++++-----------
 1 file changed, 12 insertions(+), 11 deletions(-)

-Peff

[PATCH 1/3] validate_headref: NUL-terminate HEAD buffer

[Jeff King]

When we are checking to see if we have a git repo, we peek
into the HEAD file and see if it's a plausible symlink,
symref, or detached HEAD.

For the latter two, we read the contents with read_in_full(),
which means they aren't NUL-terminated. The symref check is
careful to respect the length we got, but the sha1 check
will happily parse up to 40 bytes, even if we read fewer.

E.g.,:

  echo 1234 >.git/HEAD
  git rev-parse

will parse 36 uninitialized bytes from our stack buffer.

This isn't a big deal in practice. Our buffer is 256 bytes,
so we know we'll never read outside of it. The worst case is
that the uninitialized bytes look like valid hex, and we
claim a bogus HEAD file is valid. The chances of this
happening randomly are quite slim, but let's be careful.

One option would be to check that "len == 41" before feeding
the buffer to get_sha1_hex(). But we'd like to eventually
prepare for a world with variable-length hashes. Let's
NUL-terminate as soon as we've read the buffer (we already
even leave a spare byte to do so!). That fixes this problem
without depending on the size of an object id.

Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
---
 path.c | 4 ++++
 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+)

diff --git a/path.c b/path.c
index b533ec938d..3e4d7505ef 100644
--- a/path.c
+++ b/path.c
@@ -662,6 +662,10 @@ int validate_headref(const char *path)
 	len = read_in_full(fd, buffer, sizeof(buffer)-1);
 	close(fd);
 
+	if (len < 0)
+		return -1;
+	buffer[len] = '\0';
+
 	/*
 	 * Is it a symbolic ref?
 	 */
-- 
2.14.2.988.g01c8b37dde

Re: [PATCH 1/3] validate_headref: NUL-terminate HEAD buffer

[Junio C Hamano]

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

> diff --git a/path.c b/path.c
> index b533ec938d..3e4d7505ef 100644
> --- a/path.c
> +++ b/path.c
> @@ -662,6 +662,10 @@ int validate_headref(const char *path)
>  	len = read_in_full(fd, buffer, sizeof(buffer)-1);
>  	close(fd);
>  
> +	if (len < 0)
> +		return -1;
> +	buffer[len] = '\0';
> +
>  	/*
>  	 * Is it a symbolic ref?
>  	 */

A few tangents I noticed:

 - the result of readlink should be checked with starts_with() in
   the modern codebase (#leftoverbits).

 - buffer[256] would mean that we cannot have a branch whose name is
   more than a couple of hundred bytes long; as you said, we may be
   better off using strbuf_read to read the whole thing.

Neither should be touched by this patch, of course.

Thanks.

Re: [PATCH 1/3] validate_headref: NUL-terminate HEAD buffer

[Jeff King]

On Wed, Sep 27, 2017 at 04:06:22PM +0900, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> A few tangents I noticed:
> 
>  - the result of readlink should be checked with starts_with() in
>    the modern codebase (#leftoverbits).

Yes, though it needs to NUL-terminate, too (readlink does not do so
automatically). Again, we seem to have left room for the NUL but didn't
bother to put it there.

>  - buffer[256] would mean that we cannot have a branch whose name is
>    more than a couple of hundred bytes long; as you said, we may be
>    better off using strbuf_read to read the whole thing.

Heh, I almost talked about this in the cover letter, but didn't want to
go off on a tangent. But since you mention it...

I had the same concern, but actually truncation is not a problem here
(for a symlink or a symref). We are only seeing if the contents look
vaguely correct, so really we never parse past "refs/" in either case.

The real symref resolution happens in refs/files-backend.c these days,
and does use a strbuf.

-Peff

Re: [PATCH 1/3] validate_headref: NUL-terminate HEAD buffer

[Junio C Hamano]

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

> I had the same concern, but actually truncation is not a problem here
> (for a symlink or a symref). We are only seeing if the contents look
> vaguely correct, so really we never parse past "refs/" in either case.

Ahh, OK.

It seems that at least for this week, my reviews always show you
thought things more thoroughly than I did, which is good in a weird
sort of sense ;-)

[PATCH 2/3] validate_headref: use skip_prefix for symref parsing

[Jeff King]

Since the previous commit guarantees that our symref buffer
is NUL-terminated, we can just use skip_prefix() and friends
to parse it. This is shorter and saves us having to deal
with magic numbers and keeping the "len" counter up to date.

While we're at it, let's name the rather obscure "buf" to
"refname", since that is the thing we are parsing with it.

Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
---
 path.c | 15 ++++++---------
 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 9 deletions(-)

diff --git a/path.c b/path.c
index 3e4d7505ef..2ef3a86613 100644
--- a/path.c
+++ b/path.c
@@ -637,7 +637,8 @@ void strbuf_git_common_path(struct strbuf *sb,
 int validate_headref(const char *path)
 {
 	struct stat st;
-	char *buf, buffer[256];
+	char buffer[256];
+	const char *refname;
 	unsigned char sha1[20];
 	int fd;
 	ssize_t len;
@@ -669,14 +670,10 @@ int validate_headref(const char *path)
 	/*
 	 * Is it a symbolic ref?
 	 */
-	if (len < 4)
-		return -1;
-	if (!memcmp("ref:", buffer, 4)) {
-		buf = buffer + 4;
-		len -= 4;
-		while (len && isspace(*buf))
-			buf++, len--;
-		if (len >= 5 && !memcmp("refs/", buf, 5))
+	if (skip_prefix(buffer, "ref:", &refname)) {
+		while (isspace(*refname))
+			refname++;
+		if (starts_with(refname, "refs/"))
 			return 0;
 	}
 
-- 
2.14.2.988.g01c8b37dde

Re: [PATCH 2/3] validate_headref: use skip_prefix for symref parsing

[Junio C Hamano]

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

> Since the previous commit guarantees that our symref buffer
> is NUL-terminated, we can just use skip_prefix() and friends
> to parse it. This is shorter and saves us having to deal
> with magic numbers and keeping the "len" counter up to date.

Ah, I should have read the whole thing before starting to type a
response to 1/3 ;-)

Looks good.

[PATCH 3/3] validate_headref: use get_oid_hex for detached HEADs

[Jeff King]

If a candidate HEAD isn't a symref, we check that it
contains a viable sha1. But in a post-sha1 world, we should
be checking whether it has any plausible object-id.

We can do that by switching to get_oid_hex().

Note that both before and after this patch, we only check
for a plausible object id at the start of the file, and then
call that good enough.  We ignore any content _after_ the
hex, so a string like:

  0123456789012345678901234567890123456789 foo

is accepted. Though we do put extra bytes like this into
some pseudorefs (e.g., FETCH_HEAD), we don't typically do so
with HEAD. We could tighten this up by using parse_oid_hex(),
like:

  if (!parse_oid_hex(buffer, &oid, &end) &&
      *end++ == '\n' && *end == '\0')
          return 0;

But we're probably better to remain on the loose side. We're
just checking here for a plausible-looking repository
directory, so heuristics are acceptable (if we really want
to be meticulous, we should use the actual ref code to parse
HEAD).

Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
---
 path.c | 4 ++--
 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/path.c b/path.c
index 2ef3a86613..5aa9244eb2 100644
--- a/path.c
+++ b/path.c
@@ -639,7 +639,7 @@ int validate_headref(const char *path)
 	struct stat st;
 	char buffer[256];
 	const char *refname;
-	unsigned char sha1[20];
+	struct object_id oid;
 	int fd;
 	ssize_t len;
 
@@ -680,7 +680,7 @@ int validate_headref(const char *path)
 	/*
 	 * Is this a detached HEAD?
 	 */
-	if (!get_sha1_hex(buffer, sha1))
+	if (!get_oid_hex(buffer, &oid))
 		return 0;
 
 	return -1;
-- 
2.14.2.988.g01c8b37dde