threads / patch / 60609

patchmailinfo: fix out-of-bounds memory reads in unquote_quoted_pair()

Subject: [PATCH] mailinfo: fix out-of-bounds memory reads in unquote_quoted_pair()

## tl;dr

10 messages between Dec 12, 2023 and Dec 15, 2023. Diffs are folded; open one to read it.

replies: 9people: 3as markdown or json

Jeff King· Dec 12, 2023, 22:12 UTC · lore

When processing a header like a "From" line, mailinfo uses unquote_quoted_pair() to handle double-quotes and rfc822 parenthesized comments. It takes a NUL-terminated string on input, and loops over the "in" pointer until it sees the NUL. When it finds the start of an interesting block, it delegates to helper functions which also increment "in", and return the updated pointer.

But there's a bug here: the helpers find the NUL with a post-increment in the loop condition, like:

   while ((c = *in++) != 0)

So when they do see a NUL (rather than the correct termination of the quote or comment section), they return "in" as one _past_ the NUL terminator. And thus the outer loop in unquote_quoted_pair() does not realize we hit the NUL, and keeps reading past the end of the buffer.

We should instead make sure to return "in" positioned at the NUL, so that the caller knows to stop their loop, too. A hacky way to do this is to return "in - 1" after leaving the inner loop. But a slightly cleaner solution is to avoid incrementing "in" until we are sure it contained a non-NUL byte (i.e., doing it inside the loop body).

The two tests here show off the problem. Since we check the output, they'll _usually_ report a failure in a normal build, but it depends on what garbage bytes are found after the heap buffer. Building with SANITIZE=address reliably notices the problem. The outcome (both the exit code and the exact bytes) are just what Git happens to produce for these cases today, and shouldn't be taken as an endorsement. It might be reasonable to abort on an unterminated string, for example. The priority for this patch is fixing the out-of-bounds memory access.

Reported-by: Carlos Andrés Ramírez Cataño <antaigroupltda@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
---
This was reported to the security list, but because it's just an
out-of-bounds read, we won't do a coordinated disclosure.
 mailinfo.c          |  8 ++++----
 t/t5100-mailinfo.sh | 22 ++++++++++++++++++++++
 2 files changed, 26 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)
Show changes to 2 files +26 −4

mailinfo.c, t/t5100-mailinfo.sh

diff --git a/mailinfo.c b/mailinfo.c
index a07d2da16d..737b9e5e13 100644
--- a/mailinfo.c
+++ b/mailinfo.c
@@ -58,12 +58,12 @@ static void parse_bogus_from(struct mailinfo *mi, const struct strbuf *line)
 
 static const char *unquote_comment(struct strbuf *outbuf, const char *in)
 {
-	int c;
 	int take_next_literally = 0;
 
 	strbuf_addch(outbuf, '(');
 
-	while ((c = *in++) != 0) {
+	while (*in) {
+		int c = *in++;
 		if (take_next_literally == 1) {
 			take_next_literally = 0;
 		} else {
@@ -88,10 +88,10 @@ static const char *unquote_comment(struct strbuf *outbuf, const char *in)
 
 static const char *unquote_quoted_string(struct strbuf *outbuf, const char *in)
 {
-	int c;
 	int take_next_literally = 0;
 
-	while ((c = *in++) != 0) {
+	while (*in) {
+		int c = *in++;
 		if (take_next_literally == 1) {
 			take_next_literally = 0;
 		} else {
diff --git a/t/t5100-mailinfo.sh b/t/t5100-mailinfo.sh
index db11cababd..654d8cf3ee 100755
--- a/t/t5100-mailinfo.sh
+++ b/t/t5100-mailinfo.sh
@@ -268,4 +268,26 @@ test_expect_success 'mailinfo warn CR in base64 encoded email' '
 	test_must_be_empty quoted-cr/0002.err
 '
 
+test_expect_success 'from line with unterminated quoted string' '
+	echo "From: bob \"unterminated string smith <bob@example.com>" >in &&
+	git mailinfo /dev/null /dev/null <in >actual &&
+	cat >expect <<-\EOF &&
+	Author: bob unterminated string smith
+	Email: bob@example.com
+
+	EOF
+	test_cmp expect actual
+'
+
+test_expect_success 'from line with unterminated comment' '
+	echo "From: bob (unterminated comment smith <bob@example.com>" >in &&
+	git mailinfo /dev/null /dev/null <in >actual &&
+	cat >expect <<-\EOF &&
+	Author: bob (unterminated comment smith
+	Email: bob@example.com
+
+	EOF
+	test_cmp expect actual
+'
+
 test_done
-- 
2.43.0.310.g85bf1f633d
Patrick Steinhardt· Dec 13, 2023, 07:07 UTC · re: Jeff King · lore

Re: [PATCH] mailinfo: fix out-of-bounds memory reads in unquote_quoted_pair()

On Tue, Dec 12, 2023 at 05:12:43PM -0500, Jeff King wrote:
Show 31 quoted lines
> When processing a header like a "From" line, mailinfo uses
> unquote_quoted_pair() to handle double-quotes and rfc822 parenthesized
> comments. It takes a NUL-terminated string on input, and loops over the
> "in" pointer until it sees the NUL. When it finds the start of an
> interesting block, it delegates to helper functions which also increment
> "in", and return the updated pointer.
> 
> But there's a bug here: the helpers find the NUL with a post-increment
> in the loop condition, like:
> 
>    while ((c = *in++) != 0)
> 
> So when they do see a NUL (rather than the correct termination of the
> quote or comment section), they return "in" as one _past_ the NUL
> terminator. And thus the outer loop in unquote_quoted_pair() does not
> realize we hit the NUL, and keeps reading past the end of the buffer.
> 
> We should instead make sure to return "in" positioned at the NUL, so
> that the caller knows to stop their loop, too. A hacky way to do this is
> to return "in - 1" after leaving the inner loop. But a slightly cleaner
> solution is to avoid incrementing "in" until we are sure it contained a
> non-NUL byte (i.e., doing it inside the loop body).
> 
> The two tests here show off the problem. Since we check the output,
> they'll _usually_ report a failure in a normal build, but it depends on
> what garbage bytes are found after the heap buffer. Building with
> SANITIZE=address reliably notices the problem. The outcome (both the
> exit code and the exact bytes) are just what Git happens to produce for
> these cases today, and shouldn't be taken as an endorsement. It might be
> reasonable to abort on an unterminated string, for example. The priority
> for this patch is fixing the out-of-bounds memory access.
Makes sense.
Show 32 quoted lines
> diff --git a/mailinfo.c b/mailinfo.c
> index a07d2da16d..737b9e5e13 100644
> --- a/mailinfo.c
> +++ b/mailinfo.c
> @@ -58,12 +58,12 @@ static void parse_bogus_from(struct mailinfo *mi, const struct strbuf *line)
>  
>  static const char *unquote_comment(struct strbuf *outbuf, const char *in)
>  {
> -	int c;
>  	int take_next_literally = 0;
>  
>  	strbuf_addch(outbuf, '(');
>  
> -	while ((c = *in++) != 0) {
> +	while (*in) {
> +		int c = *in++;
>  		if (take_next_literally == 1) {
>  			take_next_literally = 0;
>  		} else {
> @@ -88,10 +88,10 @@ static const char *unquote_comment(struct strbuf *outbuf, const char *in)
>  
>  static const char *unquote_quoted_string(struct strbuf *outbuf, const char *in)
>  {
> -	int c;
>  	int take_next_literally = 0;
>  
> -	while ((c = *in++) != 0) {
> +	while (*in) {
> +		int c = *in++;
>  		if (take_next_literally == 1) {
>  			take_next_literally = 0;
>  		} else {

I was wondering whether we want to convert `unquote_quoted_pair()` in the same way. It's not subject to the same issue because it doesn't return `in` to its callers. But it would lower the cognitive overhead a bit by keeping the coding style consistent. But please feel free to ignore this remark.

Another thing I was wondering about is the recursive nature of these functions, and whether it can lead to similar issues like we recently had when parsing revisions with stack exhaustion. I _think_ this should not be much of a problem in this case though, as we're talking about mail headers here. While the length of header values isn't restricted per se (the line length is restricted to 1000, but with Comment Folding Whitespace values can span multiple lines), but mail provdiers will sure clamp down on mails with a "From:" header that is megabytes in size.

So taken together, this looks good to me.
Patrick
Jeff King· Dec 13, 2023, 08:20 UTC · re: Patrick Steinhardt · lore

Re: [PATCH] mailinfo: fix out-of-bounds memory reads in unquote_quoted_pair()

On Wed, Dec 13, 2023 at 08:07:21AM +0100, Patrick Steinhardt wrote:
Show 17 quoted lines
> >  static const char *unquote_quoted_string(struct strbuf *outbuf, const char *in)
> >  {
> > -	int c;
> >  	int take_next_literally = 0;
> >  
> > -	while ((c = *in++) != 0) {
> > +	while (*in) {
> > +		int c = *in++;
> >  		if (take_next_literally == 1) {
> >  			take_next_literally = 0;
> >  		} else {
> 
> I was wondering whether we want to convert `unquote_quoted_pair()` in
> the same way. It's not subject to the same issue because it doesn't
> return `in` to its callers. But it would lower the cognitive overhead a
> bit by keeping the coding style consistent. But please feel free to
> ignore this remark.

I dunno. I don't think the consistency matters that much between functions, and on its own, the "while ((c = *in++))" pattern is not harmful. It's used elsewhere in the same file for other functions that are also fine (for decoding q/b headers).

Show 8 quoted lines
> Another thing I was wondering about is the recursive nature of these
> functions, and whether it can lead to similar issues like we recently
> had when parsing revisions with stack exhaustion. I _think_ this should
> not be much of a problem in this case though, as we're talking about
> mail headers here. While the length of header values isn't restricted
> per se (the line length is restricted to 1000, but with Comment Folding
> Whitespace values can span multiple lines), but mail provdiers will sure
> clamp down on mails with a "From:" header that is megabytes in size.

It's just unquote_comment() that is recursive, but yeah, there is nothing to stop it from recursing forever on "((((((...". The stack requirements are pretty small, though. I needed between 2^17 and 2^18 bytes to segfault on my machine using:

  perl -e 'print "From: ", "(" x 2**18;' |
  git mailinfo /dev/null /dev/null

Absurdly big for an email, but maybe within the realm of possibility? I think it might be possible to drop the recursion and just use a depth counter, like this:

Show changes to mailinfo.c +6 −3
diff --git a/mailinfo.c b/mailinfo.c
index 737b9e5e13..db236f9f9f 100644
--- a/mailinfo.c
+++ b/mailinfo.c
@@ -59,6 +59,7 @@ static void parse_bogus_from(struct mailinfo *mi, const struct strbuf *line)
 static const char *unquote_comment(struct strbuf *outbuf, const char *in)
 {
 	int take_next_literally = 0;
+	int depth = 1;
 
 	strbuf_addch(outbuf, '(');
 
@@ -72,11 +73,14 @@ static const char *unquote_comment(struct strbuf *outbuf, const char *in)
 				take_next_literally = 1;
 				continue;
 			case '(':
-				in = unquote_comment(outbuf, in);
+				strbuf_addch(outbuf, '(');
+				depth++;
 				continue;
 			case ')':
 				strbuf_addch(outbuf, ')');
-				return in;
+				if (!--depth)
+					return in;
+				continue;
 			}
 		}
 
I doubt it's a big deal either way, but if it's that easy to do it might
be worth it.

-Peff
Patrick Steinhardt· Dec 14, 2023, 07:41 UTC · re: Jeff King · lore

Re: [PATCH] mailinfo: fix out-of-bounds memory reads in unquote_quoted_pair()

On Wed, Dec 13, 2023 at 03:20:27AM -0500, Jeff King wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 13, 2023 at 08:07:21AM +0100, Patrick Steinhardt wrote:
[snip]
Show 20 quoted lines
> > Another thing I was wondering about is the recursive nature of these
> > functions, and whether it can lead to similar issues like we recently
> > had when parsing revisions with stack exhaustion. I _think_ this should
> > not be much of a problem in this case though, as we're talking about
> > mail headers here. While the length of header values isn't restricted
> > per se (the line length is restricted to 1000, but with Comment Folding
> > Whitespace values can span multiple lines), but mail provdiers will sure
> > clamp down on mails with a "From:" header that is megabytes in size.
> 
> It's just unquote_comment() that is recursive, but yeah, there is
> nothing to stop it from recursing forever on "((((((...". The stack
> requirements are pretty small, though. I needed between 2^17 and 2^18
> bytes to segfault on my machine using:
> 
>   perl -e 'print "From: ", "(" x 2**18;' |
>   git mailinfo /dev/null /dev/null
> 
> Absurdly big for an email, but maybe within the realm of possibility? I
> think it might be possible to drop the recursion and just use a depth
> counter, like this:

It's definitely not as large as I'd have expected it to be, we're only talking about kilobytes of data. Feels like it might be in the realm of possibility to get transferred by a mail provider.

Show 31 quoted lines
> diff --git a/mailinfo.c b/mailinfo.c
> index 737b9e5e13..db236f9f9f 100644
> --- a/mailinfo.c
> +++ b/mailinfo.c
> @@ -59,6 +59,7 @@ static void parse_bogus_from(struct mailinfo *mi, const struct strbuf *line)
>  static const char *unquote_comment(struct strbuf *outbuf, const char *in)
>  {
>  	int take_next_literally = 0;
> +	int depth = 1;
>  
>  	strbuf_addch(outbuf, '(');
>  
> @@ -72,11 +73,14 @@ static const char *unquote_comment(struct strbuf *outbuf, const char *in)
>  				take_next_literally = 1;
>  				continue;
>  			case '(':
> -				in = unquote_comment(outbuf, in);
> +				strbuf_addch(outbuf, '(');
> +				depth++;
>  				continue;
>  			case ')':
>  				strbuf_addch(outbuf, ')');
> -				return in;
> +				if (!--depth)
> +					return in;
> +				continue;
>  			}
>  		}
>  
> I doubt it's a big deal either way, but if it's that easy to do it might
> be worth it.

Isn't this only protecting against unbalanced braces? That might be a sensible check to do regardless, but does it protect against recursion blowing the stack if you just happen to have many opening braces?

Might be I'm missing something.
Patrick
Jeff King· Dec 14, 2023, 21:44 UTC · re: Patrick Steinhardt · lore

[PATCH 0/2] avoiding recursion in mailinfo

On Thu, Dec 14, 2023 at 08:41:20AM +0100, Patrick Steinhardt wrote:
Show 25 quoted lines
> > @@ -72,11 +73,14 @@ static const char *unquote_comment(struct strbuf *outbuf, const char *in)
> >  				take_next_literally = 1;
> >  				continue;
> >  			case '(':
> > -				in = unquote_comment(outbuf, in);
> > +				strbuf_addch(outbuf, '(');
> > +				depth++;
> >  				continue;
> >  			case ')':
> >  				strbuf_addch(outbuf, ')');
> > -				return in;
> > +				if (!--depth)
> > +					return in;
> > +				continue;
> >  			}
> >  		}
> >  
> > I doubt it's a big deal either way, but if it's that easy to do it might
> > be worth it.
> 
> Isn't this only protecting against unbalanced braces? That might be a
> sensible check to do regardless, but does it protect against recursion
> blowing the stack if you just happen to have many opening braces?
> 
> Might be I'm missing something.

It protects against recrusion blowing the stack because it removes the recursive call to unquote_comment(). ;)

The "depth" stuff is there because without recursion, we have to know when we've hit the correct closing paren (as opposed to an embedded one).

Here it is as a patch (actually two patches). I don't think it's high priority, but I'd sunk enough brain cells into thinking about it that I wanted to capture the work. ;)

I did it on top of the earlier mailinfo out-of-bounds read fix, but it could be applied separately.

  [1/2]: t5100: make rfc822 comment test more careful
  [2/2]: mailinfo: avoid recursion when unquoting From headers
 mailinfo.c             | 8 ++++++--
 t/t5100/comment.expect | 2 +-
 t/t5100/comment.in     | 2 +-
 3 files changed, 8 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)
-Peff
Jeff King· Dec 14, 2023, 21:47 UTC · re: Jeff King · lore

[PATCH 1/2] t5100: make rfc822 comment test more careful

When processing "From" headers in an email, mailinfo "unquotes" quoted strings and rfc822 parenthesized comments. For quoted strings, we actually remove the double-quotes, so:

  From: "A U Thor" <someone@example.com>
become:
  Author: A U Thor
  Email: someone@example.com
But for comments, we leave the outer parentheses in place, so:
  From: A U (this is a comment) Thor <someone@example.com>
becomes:
  Author: A U (this is a comment) Thor
  Email: someone@example.com

So what is the comment "unquoting" actually doing? In our code, being in a comment section has exactly two effects:

  1. We'll unquote backslash-escaped characters inside a comment
     section.
  2. We _won't_ unquote double-quoted strings inside a comment section.
Our test for comments in t5100 checks this:
  From: "A U Thor" <somebody@example.com> (this is \(really\) a comment (honestly))

So it is covering (1), but not (2). Let's add in a quoted string to cover this.

Moreover, because the comment appears at the end of the From header, there's nothing to confirm that we correctly found the end of the comment section (and not just the end-of-string). Let's instead move it to the beginning of the header, which means we can confirm that the existing quoted string is detected (which will only happen if we know we've left the comment block).

As expected, the test continues to pass, but this will give us more confidence as we refactor the code in the next patch.

Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
---
I did this as a separate patch so it is easy to see that the existing
code already passes the test (i.e., our refactor is a true noop in terms
of behavior, and not fixing or breaking anything).
 t/t5100/comment.expect | 2 +-
 t/t5100/comment.in     | 2 +-
 2 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
Show changes to 2 files +2 −2

t/t5100/comment.expect, t/t5100/comment.in

diff --git a/t/t5100/comment.expect b/t/t5100/comment.expect
index 7228177984..bd71956a47 100644
--- a/t/t5100/comment.expect
+++ b/t/t5100/comment.expect
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-Author: A U Thor (this is (really) a comment (honestly))
+Author: (this is (really) a "comment" (honestly)) A U Thor
 Email: somebody@example.com
 Subject: testing comments
 Date: Sun, 25 May 2008 00:38:18 -0700
diff --git a/t/t5100/comment.in b/t/t5100/comment.in
index c53a192dfe..0b7e903b06 100644
--- a/t/t5100/comment.in
+++ b/t/t5100/comment.in
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 From 1234567890123456789012345678901234567890 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
-From: "A U Thor" <somebody@example.com> (this is \(really\) a comment (honestly))
+From: (this is \(really\) a "comment" (honestly)) "A U Thor" <somebody@example.com>
 Date: Sun, 25 May 2008 00:38:18 -0700
 Subject: [PATCH] testing comments
 
-- 
2.43.0.363.g1d22a8f302
Jeff King· Dec 14, 2023, 21:48 UTC · re: Jeff King · lore

[PATCH 2/2] mailinfo: avoid recursion when unquoting From headers

Our unquote_comment() function is recursive; when it sees a comment within a comment, like:

  (this is an (embedded) comment)

it recurses to handle the inner comment. This is fine for practical use, but it does mean that you can easily run out of stack space with a malicious header. For example:

  perl -e 'print "From: ", "(" x 2**18;' |
  git mailinfo /dev/null /dev/null

segfaults on my system. And since mailinfo is likely to be fed untrusted input from the Internet (if not by human users, who might recognize a garbage header, but certainly there are automated systems that apply patches from a list) it may be possible for an attacker to trigger the problem.

That said, I don't think there's an interesting security vulnerability here. All an attacker can do is make it impossible to parse their email and apply their patch, and there are lots of ways to generate bogus emails. So it's more of an annoyance than anything.

But it's pretty easy to fix it. The recursion is not helping us preserve any particular state from each level. The only flag in our parsing is take_next_literally, and we can never recurse when it is set (since the start of a new comment implies it was not backslash-escaped). So it is really only useful for finding the end of the matched pair of parentheses. We can do that easily with a simple depth counter.

Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
---
 mailinfo.c | 8 ++++++--
 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
Show changes to mailinfo.c +6 −2
diff --git a/mailinfo.c b/mailinfo.c
index 737b9e5e13..db236f9f9f 100644
--- a/mailinfo.c
+++ b/mailinfo.c
@@ -59,6 +59,7 @@ static void parse_bogus_from(struct mailinfo *mi, const struct strbuf *line)
 static const char *unquote_comment(struct strbuf *outbuf, const char *in)
 {
 	int take_next_literally = 0;
+	int depth = 1;
 
 	strbuf_addch(outbuf, '(');
 
@@ -72,11 +73,14 @@ static const char *unquote_comment(struct strbuf *outbuf, const char *in)
 				take_next_literally = 1;
 				continue;
 			case '(':
-				in = unquote_comment(outbuf, in);
+				strbuf_addch(outbuf, '(');
+				depth++;
 				continue;
 			case ')':
 				strbuf_addch(outbuf, ')');
-				return in;
+				if (!--depth)
+					return in;
+				continue;
 			}
 		}
 
-- 
2.43.0.363.g1d22a8f302
Patrick Steinhardt· Dec 15, 2023, 07:58 UTC · re: Jeff King · lore

Re: [PATCH 0/2] avoiding recursion in mailinfo

On Thu, Dec 14, 2023 at 04:44:44PM -0500, Jeff King wrote:
Show 30 quoted lines
> On Thu, Dec 14, 2023 at 08:41:20AM +0100, Patrick Steinhardt wrote:
> 
> > > @@ -72,11 +73,14 @@ static const char *unquote_comment(struct strbuf *outbuf, const char *in)
> > >  				take_next_literally = 1;
> > >  				continue;
> > >  			case '(':
> > > -				in = unquote_comment(outbuf, in);
> > > +				strbuf_addch(outbuf, '(');
> > > +				depth++;
> > >  				continue;
> > >  			case ')':
> > >  				strbuf_addch(outbuf, ')');
> > > -				return in;
> > > +				if (!--depth)
> > > +					return in;
> > > +				continue;
> > >  			}
> > >  		}
> > >  
> > > I doubt it's a big deal either way, but if it's that easy to do it might
> > > be worth it.
> > 
> > Isn't this only protecting against unbalanced braces? That might be a
> > sensible check to do regardless, but does it protect against recursion
> > blowing the stack if you just happen to have many opening braces?
> > 
> > Might be I'm missing something.
> 
> It protects against recrusion blowing the stack because it removes the
> recursive call to unquote_comment(). ;)
Doh. Of course it does, I completely missed the removals.
> The "depth" stuff is there because without recursion, we have to know
> when we've hit the correct closing paren (as opposed to an embedded
> one).
Yes, makes sense now. The patches look good to me, thanks!
Patrick
Junio C Hamano· Dec 13, 2023, 14:54 UTC · re: Patrick Steinhardt · lore

Re: [PATCH] mailinfo: fix out-of-bounds memory reads in unquote_quoted_pair()

Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im> writes:
Show 17 quoted lines
>>  static const char *unquote_quoted_string(struct strbuf *outbuf, const char *in)
>>  {
>> -	int c;
>>  	int take_next_literally = 0;
>>  
>> -	while ((c = *in++) != 0) {
>> +	while (*in) {
>> +		int c = *in++;
>>  		if (take_next_literally == 1) {
>>  			take_next_literally = 0;
>>  		} else {
>
> I was wondering whether we want to convert `unquote_quoted_pair()` in
> the same way. It's not subject to the same issue because it doesn't
> return `in` to its callers. But it would lower the cognitive overhead a
> bit by keeping the coding style consistent. But please feel free to
> ignore this remark.

Yeah, I was wondering about the value of establishing a pattern that can be followed safely and with clarity, too. I also briefly wondered how bad if we picked the "compensate for the increment done by the last iteration before leaving the loop by returning (in-1)" idiom (which Peff called "a hacky way") to be that universal pattern, but this bug was a clear enough evidence that it does not work very well in developers' minds.

I actually had trouble with the proposed update, and wondered if

- while ((c = *in++) != 0) { + while ((c = *in)) { + in++;

is easier to follow, but then was hit by the possibility that the same "we have incremented 'in' a bit too early" may exist if such a loop wants to use 'in' in its body. Wouldn't it mean that

- while ((c = *in++) != 0) { + for (; c = *in; in++) {

would be even a better rewrite?
Enough bikeshedding...
Show 8 quoted lines
> Another thing I was wondering about is the recursive nature of these
> functions, and whether it can lead to similar issues like we recently
> had when parsing revisions with stack exhaustion. I _think_ this should
> not be much of a problem in this case though, as we're talking about
> mail headers here. While the length of header values isn't restricted
> per se (the line length is restricted to 1000, but with Comment Folding
> Whitespace values can span multiple lines), but mail provdiers will sure
> clamp down on mails with a "From:" header that is megabytes in size.

Good thinking, and I think Peff's iterative rewrite would be a good way to deal with it if it ever becomes an issue.

> So taken together, this looks good to me.
Thanks, both, for writing and reviewing.
Jeff King· Dec 14, 2023, 21:40 UTC · re: Junio C Hamano · lore

Re: [PATCH] mailinfo: fix out-of-bounds memory reads in unquote_quoted_pair()

On Wed, Dec 13, 2023 at 06:54:03AM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:
Show 14 quoted lines
> I actually had trouble with the proposed update, and wondered if
> 
> -	while ((c = *in++) != 0) {
> +	while ((c = *in)) {
> +		in++;
> 
> is easier to follow, but then was hit by the possibility that the
> same "we have incremented 'in' a bit too early" may exist if such
> a loop wants to use 'in' in its body.  Wouldn't it mean that
> 
> -	while ((c = *in++) != 0) {
> +	for (; c = *in; in++) {
> 
> would be even a better rewrite?

No, the "for" loop wouldn't work, because the loop body actually depends on "in" having already been incremented. If we find the end of the comment or quoted string, we return "in", and the caller is expecting it to have moved past the closing quote. So that would have to become "return in+1".

IOW, the issue is that the normal end-of-quote parsing and hitting end-of-string are fundamentally different. So we either need to differentiate the returns (either with "+1" on one, or "-1" on the other). Or we need to choose to increment "in" based on which we found (which is what my patch does).

-Peff

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