perf.data validation and hardening (29 patches)
A crafted or corrupted perf.data file can cause out-of-bounds
reads/writes, infinite loops, heap overflows, and segfaults in perf
report, perf script, perf inject, perf timechart, and perf kwork.
This series adds defense-in-depth validation for file parsing:
- Per-event-type minimum size table, enforced before swap and
processing on both native and cross-endian paths.
- Bounds-checking the one_mmap fast path in peek_event against the
mapped region size, preventing OOB reads from crafted file_offset.
- Swap handler return values (void -> int) so handlers can propagate
errors instead of silently corrupting adjacent memory.
- Bounds checking for string fields (null-termination), array counts
(nr vs payload size), feature section sizes (vs file size), and
CPU indices (vs nr_cpus_avail / array allocation).
- ABI0 handling for perf_event_attr.size == 0 across all code paths
(swap, native, synthesize, read_event_desc), with consistent
behavior regardless of file endianness.
- READ_ONCE() snapshot of event->header.size in process_user_event()
to prevent compiler rematerialization from MAP_SHARED memory.
- Sanitizer-aware shell test: the truncated perf.data test captures
stderr and checks for ASAN/MSAN/TSAN/UBSAN markers, since sanitizer
exits use code 1 which otherwise looks like a clean error exit.
Pre-existing bugs fixed along the way:
- event_contains() macro off-by-one (checked start, not full extent)
- zstd_decompress_stream multi-iteration output.pos bug
- zstd_compress_stream_to_records: broken memcpy fallback -> return -1
+ ZSTD context reset + dst_size underflow guard
- PERF_RECORD_SWITCH sample_id_all offset wrong for non-CPU_WIDE
- cpu_map__from_range any_cpu used as count instead of boolean
- cpu_map__from_mask double-fetch heap overflow (j >= weight guard)
- kwork cpus_runtime BUG_ON with signed comparison
- perf_header__getbuffer64 EOF without errno (silent success)
- read_event_desc ABI0 sentinel (attr.size=0 -> free_event_desc early stop)
- EVENT_UPDATE MASK: missing offsetof underflow guard + pr_warning on
mask32/mask64 validation paths
Additional pre-existing issues were noticed during review and will be
addressed in follow-up series.
Testing
-------
- perf test at baseline and at patches 1, 8, 11, 17, 21, 26, 29
with 300s timeout -- no regressions detected.
- Build with both gcc and clang at every patch.
- checkpatch.pl on all 29 patches.
- Full root perf test on x86_64 (x1, i7-1260P) and aarch64
(Raspberry Pi 4, Cortex-A72, Debian trixie).
Developed with AI assistance (Claude/sashiko), tagged in commits.
It is available at:
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/perf/perf-tools-next.git perf-data-validation
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/perf/perf-tools-next.git/log/?h=perf-data-validation
I think this is the last one, followup series will deal with the
pre-existing issues found while working on this series, its all in
several TODO files.
Best regards,
- Arnaldo
Changes in v4
-------------
- Patch 22: fix comment in process_mem_topology() — per-node fields
are node_id + mem_size + bitmap_nr_bits, not version + bitmap_size.
- Patch 29: add mktemp failure guards (exit 2 = skip) so empty
variables don't cause 'rm -f .old' in cleanup. Use dd bs=$cut_at
count=1 instead of bs=1 count=$cut_at to avoid one syscall per byte.
Changes in v3
-------------
- Patch 10: fix perf_event__repipe_attr() in builtin-inject.c to
handle ABI0 attr.size==0 — was using the raw size for memcpy and
the perf_record_header_attr_id() macro, which both break when
attr.size is 0.
- Patch 12: add sample_id_all handling to perf_event__build_id_swap()
— perf_event__synthesize_build_id() appends id_sample data, so
cross-endian pipe mode must swap those trailing fields.
- Patch 24: remove comp_mmap_len upper-bound cap that rejected valid
perf record -m 2G recordings (mmap_len exceeds 2GB - 4096). The
downstream decompression path already checks against SIZE_MAX.
Changes in v2
-------------
- Patch 8: strnlen with 'end - data' limit instead of open-ended strlen
- Patch 10: ABI0 attr.size==0 handling for native-endian path
- Patch 13: READ_ONCE snapshot for mask32_data.nr, long_size validation
- Patch 17: attr_size bounds check for all PRINT_ATTRn macros
Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo (29):
perf session: Add minimum event size and alignment validation
perf session: Bounds-check one_mmap event pointer in peek_event
perf tools: Fix event_contains() macro to verify full field extent
perf zstd: Fix compression error path in zstd_compress_stream_to_records()
perf zstd: Fix multi-iteration decompression and error handling
perf session: Fix PERF_RECORD_READ swap and dump for variable-length events
perf session: Fix swap_sample_id_all() crash on crafted events
perf session: Add validated swap infrastructure with null-termination checks
perf session: Use bounded copy for PERF_RECORD_TIME_CONV
perf session: Validate HEADER_ATTR attr.size before swapping
perf session: Validate nr fields against event size on both swap and common paths
perf header: Byte-swap build ID event pid and bounds check section entries
perf cpumap: Reject RANGE_CPUS with start_cpu > end_cpu
perf auxtrace: Harden auxtrace_error event handling
perf session: Add byte-swap and bounds check for PERF_RECORD_BPF_METADATA events
perf header: Validate null-termination in PERF_RECORD_EVENT_UPDATE string fields
perf tools: Bounds check perf_event_attr fields against attr.size before printing
perf header: Propagate feature section processing errors
perf header: Validate f_attr.ids section before use in perf_session__read_header()
perf header: Validate feature section size and add read path bounds checking
perf header: Sanity check HEADER_EVENT_DESC attr.size before swap
perf header: Validate bitmap size before allocating in do_read_bitmap()
perf session: Add byte-swap handler for PERF_RECORD_COMPRESSED2
perf tools: Harden compressed event processing
perf session: Check for decompression buffer size overflow
perf session: Bound nr_cpus_avail and validate sample CPU
perf kwork: Bounds check work->cpu before indexing cpus_runtime[]
perf session: Snapshot event->header.size in process_user_event()
perf test: Add truncated perf.data robustness test
tools/lib/perf/include/perf/event.h | 9 +-
tools/perf/builtin-inject.c | 23 +-
tools/perf/builtin-kwork.c | 45 +-
tools/perf/builtin-record.c | 6 +-
tools/perf/tests/parse-no-sample-id-all.c | 6 +
tools/perf/tests/shell/data_validation.sh | 85 ++
tools/perf/trace/beauty/perf_event_open.c | 23 +-
tools/perf/util/arm-spe.c | 2 +-
tools/perf/util/auxtrace.c | 24 +-
tools/perf/util/cpumap.c | 62 +-
tools/perf/util/cs-etm.c | 2 +-
tools/perf/util/header.c | 625 +++++++-
tools/perf/util/jitdump.c | 2 +-
tools/perf/util/kwork.h | 1 +
tools/perf/util/perf_event_attr_fprintf.c | 141 +-
.../scripting-engines/trace-event-python.c | 28 +-
tools/perf/util/session.c | 1355 +++++++++++++++--
tools/perf/util/session.h | 2 +
tools/perf/util/synthetic-events.c | 25 +-
tools/perf/util/tool.c | 51 +-
tools/perf/util/tsc.c | 2 +-
tools/perf/util/zstd.c | 47 +-
22 files changed, 2272 insertions(+), 294 deletions(-)
create mode 100755 tools/perf/tests/shell/data_validation.sh
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2.54.0