From: Andrew Burgess <aburgess@redhat.com>
To: Tom de Vries <tdevries@suse.de>, gdb-patches@sourceware.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] [gdb] Fix heap-buffer-overflow in args_complete_p
Date: Mon, 05 Jan 2026 20:02:58 +0000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <871pk3ygi5.fsf@redhat.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <874iozygr7.fsf@redhat.com>
Andrew Burgess <aburgess@redhat.com> writes:
> Tom de Vries <tdevries@suse.de> writes:
>
>> PR gdb/33754 reports a heap-buffer-overflow here in args_complete_p:
>> ...
>> while (*input != '\0')
>> ...
>>
>> Fix this by introducing a lambda function at that safely handles all char
>> array accesses.
>
> Sorry to be a bore, but after reading this commit, and the bug report,
> it's still not obvious to me where the overflow actually occurs.
>
> I totally accept that this code is broken, but as I introduced this bug,
> I wanted to learn from this mistake, but this commit doesn't really
> explain what mistake is being fixed.
>
> Do you think you could explain what's actually going wrong here?
Literally after hitting send, it occurred to me, is the problem maybe
these two lines:
if (*input == '\\' && strchr ("\"\\", *(input + 1)) != nullptr)
++input;
And the other one in the 'else' block? I think if *(input + 1) is '\0',
then the strchr call will return non-nullptr, which wasn't the desired
behaviour, and could result in stepping outside the string.
If this is the case then I think the correct fix would be checking if
the character at 'input + 1' is NULL or not, see the possible patch
below (there's no commit message or anything for it yet).
Thanks,
Andrew
---
diff --git i/gdb/infcmd.c w/gdb/infcmd.c
index 875bbe1ee69..7dd3392c96a 100644
--- i/gdb/infcmd.c
+++ w/gdb/infcmd.c
@@ -148,7 +148,9 @@ args_complete_p (const std::string &args)
and we don't skip the entire '\\' then we'll only skip the
first '\', in which case we might see the second '\' as a '\"'
sequence, which would be wrong. */
- if (*input == '\\' && strchr ("\"\\", *(input + 1)) != nullptr)
+ if (*input == '\\'
+ && *(input + 1) != '\0'
+ && strchr ("\"\\", *(input + 1)) != nullptr)
++input;
/* Otherwise, just look for the closing double quote. */
else if (*input == '"')
@@ -162,7 +164,9 @@ args_complete_p (const std::string &args)
a quoted argument. The '\\' we need to skip so we don't just
skip the first '\' and then incorrectly consider the second
'\' are part of a '\"' or '\'' sequence. */
- if (*input == '\\' && strchr ("\"\\'", *(input + 1)) != nullptr)
+ if (*input == '\\'
+ && *(input + 1) != '\0'
+ && strchr ("\"\\'", *(input + 1)) != nullptr)
++input;
/* Otherwise, check for the start of a single or double quoted
argument. Single quotes have no special meaning on Windows
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2026-01-05 20:03 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 14+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2026-01-03 14:55 Tom de Vries
2026-01-05 16:38 ` Tom Tromey
2026-01-06 14:51 ` Tom de Vries
2026-01-05 19:57 ` Andrew Burgess
2026-01-05 20:02 ` Andrew Burgess [this message]
2026-01-05 20:09 ` Tom Tromey
2026-01-06 8:47 ` Tom de Vries
2026-01-06 9:29 ` Tom de Vries
2026-01-06 14:53 ` Tom de Vries
2026-01-07 10:46 ` Andrew Burgess
2026-01-07 11:21 ` Tom de Vries
2026-01-07 15:01 ` Andrew Burgess
2026-01-07 18:13 ` Tom Tromey
2026-01-12 11:42 ` Andrew Burgess
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