In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mtd: part: reject MTDPART_OFS_RETAIN in mtd_add_partition() mtd_add_partition() does not reject the special offset value MTDPART_OFS_RETAIN (-3), which leads to a WARN…

Overview

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

mtd: part: reject MTDPART_OFS_RETAIN in mtd_add_partition()

mtd_add_partition() does not reject the special offset value MTDPART_OFS_RETAIN (-3), which leads to a WARN_ON in add_mtd_device() when called through the BLKPG ioctl on NAND devices. The RETAIN value depends on cur_offset being the end of the previous partition, but in the dynamic partition path cur_offset equals the offset argument itself, causing undefined behavior.

Commit 5daa7b21496a ("mtd: prepare partition add and del functions for ioctl requests") introduced mtd_add_partition() and correctly rejected MTDPART_OFS_APPEND (-1) and MTDPART_OFS_NXTBLK (-2), since those special offsets rely on cur_offset tracking the previous partition's end. However, commit 1a31368bf92e ("mtd: add a flags for partitions which should just leave smth. after them") later added MTDPART_OFS_RETAIN (-3) for the static partition table path without updating mtd_add_partition() to also reject this value.

With offset=-3 passed via BLKPG, the RETAIN size calculation in allocate_partition() underflows (parent_size - 0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFD = parent_size + 3). If the underflow result does not appear to leave enough space, allocate_partition() jumps to out_register via goto, skipping erasesize initialization. This results in erasesize=0, which triggers:

WARN_ON((!mtd->erasesize || !master->_erase) && !(mtd->flags & MTD_NO_ERASE))

in add_mtd_device(). If the underflow result appears to leave enough space, a bogus partition size is calculated, but the "out of reach" sanity check catches the invalid offset and creates a disabled empty partition (offset=0, size=0) instead of returning an error.

Fix this by adding MTDPART_OFS_RETAIN to the rejection list in mtd_add_partition(), consistent with the existing handling of APPEND and NXTBLK.

Remediation

Refer to the linked advisories for vendor-supplied fixes and affected version ranges.