userns: Avoid recursion in put_user_ns

When freeing a deeply nested user namespace free_user_ns calls
put_user_ns on it's parent which may in turn call free_user_ns again.
When -fno-optimize-sibling-calls is passed to gcc one stack frame per
user namespace is left on the stack, potentially overflowing the
kernel stack.  CONFIG_FRAME_POINTER forces -fno-optimize-sibling-calls
so we can't count on gcc to optimize this code.

Remove struct kref and use a plain atomic_t.  Making the code more
flexible and easier to comprehend.  Make the loop in free_user_ns
explict to guarantee that the stack does not overflow with
CONFIG_FRAME_POINTER enabled.

I have tested this fix with a simple program that uses unshare to
create a deeply nested user namespace structure and then calls exit.
With 1000 nesteuser namespaces before this change running my test
program causes the kernel to die a horrible death.  With 10,000,000
nested user namespaces after this change my test program runs to
completion and causes no harm.

Acked-by: Serge Hallyn <serge.hallyn@canonical.com>
Pointed-out-by: Vasily Kulikov <segoon@openwall.com>
Signed-off-by: "Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@xmission.com>

2 files changed, 10 insertions, 11 deletions

diff --git a/kernel/user.c b/kernel/user.c
index 33acb5e53a5f..57ebfd42023c 100644
--- a/kernel/user.c
+++ b/kernel/user.c
@@ -47,9 +47,7 @@ struct user_namespace init_user_ns = {
 			.count = 4294967295U,
 		},
 	},
-	.kref = {
-		.refcount	= ATOMIC_INIT(3),
-	},
+	.count = ATOMIC_INIT(3),
 	.owner = GLOBAL_ROOT_UID,
 	.group = GLOBAL_ROOT_GID,
 	.proc_inum = PROC_USER_INIT_INO,
diff --git a/kernel/user_namespace.c b/kernel/user_namespace.c
index 2b042c42fbc4..24f8ec3b64d8 100644
--- a/kernel/user_namespace.c
+++ b/kernel/user_namespace.c
@@ -78,7 +78,7 @@ int create_user_ns(struct cred *new)
 		return ret;
 	}
 
-	kref_init(&ns->kref);
+	atomic_set(&ns->count, 1);
 	/* Leave the new->user_ns reference with the new user namespace. */
 	ns->parent = parent_ns;
 	ns->owner = owner;
@@ -104,15 +104,16 @@ int unshare_userns(unsigned long unshare_flags, struct cred **new_cred)
 	return create_user_ns(cred);
 }
 
-void free_user_ns(struct kref *kref)
+void free_user_ns(struct user_namespace *ns)
 {
-	struct user_namespace *parent, *ns =
-		container_of(kref, struct user_namespace, kref);
+	struct user_namespace *parent;
 
-	parent = ns->parent;
-	proc_free_inum(ns->proc_inum);
-	kmem_cache_free(user_ns_cachep, ns);
-	put_user_ns(parent);
+	do {
+		parent = ns->parent;
+		proc_free_inum(ns->proc_inum);
+		kmem_cache_free(user_ns_cachep, ns);
+		ns = parent;
+	} while (atomic_dec_and_test(&parent->count));
 }
 EXPORT_SYMBOL(free_user_ns);