linux/Documentation
Greg Kroah-Hartman fcbfaffee5 driver core: add TAINT_FORCED_BIND for when userspace manually messes with devices and drivers
The ability to add and remove devices from a driver through the sysfs
"bind" and "unbind" files was created all those decades ago as a way
that kernel developers can iterate faster, and provide a debugging way
for users to attempt to add a new device to a driver without having to
rebuild their kernel.

This api over the years has been abused and recently come under a major
fuzzing "attack" through tools like syzbot which decided that it would
attempt to just randomly bind any driver to any type of device, causing
loads of unneeded errors and pointless kernel patches to be generated by
unsuspecting new developers.

Handle all of this by adding a new taint flag, TAINT_FORCED_BIND, which
will be set on the driver if the bind/unbind sysfs files are ever
written to.  This lets kernel developers "know" that a user is
attempting to do something that is not normal, and as such, if the
kernel breaks they get to keep the shiny pieces laying around on the
floor.

The flag is 'Y' which was unused, and can remembered as the user is
"yeeting" the device being operated on here (thrown with force without
regard for the thing being thrown).

Note, the taint flag gets set _BEFORE_ the bind/unbind callback happens,
as many times crashes/oops/warnings/failures happen within the callback,
and the taint flag needs to be there to show what was being attempted.
If it were to be set after the callback happens, the oops report would
not properly reflect what foolishness was being attempted.

Fuzzing tools like syzbot, that doesn't have hand-crafted rules to keep
the tool from hitting bind/unbind, should be run with panic_on_taint
enabled so that they fall over and don't continue on, thinking that they
actually found a real issue.

Userspace operations that rely on the bind/unbind files to work around
the lack of will to upgrade a kernel image to a newer version with
proper support for new devices, or the lack of will to submit valid
device ids to driver authors, will still work properly, but now the
kernel will be flagged in a way that will show that perhaps those users
should reconsider their behavior and work to have the drivers properly
support these devices in a "native" manner.

Finally, the bind/unbind files can find real use-after-free issues with
some drivers by forcing the process to happen virtually without having
to rely on manual removal processes.  Those real bugs should still be
worked on, but by adding this taint flag, developers can more easily
determine bug reports that are actually worth looking at.

Reviewed-by: Johan Hovold <johan@kernel.org>
Tested-by: Johan Hovold <johan@kernel.org>
Reviewed-by: Aaron Tomlin <atomlin@atomlin.com>
Reviewed-by: Bradley Morgan <brads@mainlining.org>
Acked-by: Danilo Krummrich <dakr@kernel.org>
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260914-bind_taint-v4-3-eadf8a090903@linuxfoundation.org
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
2026-09-18 18:24:41 +01:00
..
ABI Driver core fixes for 7.3-rc2 2026-09-05 11:59:05 -07:00
accel
accounting
admin-guide driver core: add TAINT_FORCED_BIND for when userspace manually messes with devices and drivers 2026-09-18 18:24:41 +01:00
arch platform-drivers-x86 for v7.3-1 2026-08-24 10:16:35 -07:00
block A handful of late-arriving fixes, a Japanese translation that was ready 2026-08-26 09:25:12 -07:00
bpf bpf, arm64: Convert struct_ops arena arguments in the trampoline 2026-08-14 05:55:02 +02:00
cdrom
core-api mm.git review status for linus..mm-stable 2026-08-27 09:17:06 -07:00
cpu-freq
crypto This update includes the following changes: 2026-08-19 17:25:42 -07:00
dev-tools mm.git review status for linus..mm-stable 2026-08-27 09:17:06 -07:00
devicetree drm next/fixes for 7.3-rc1 2026-08-28 16:37:55 -07:00
doc-guide
driver-api More ACPI support updates for 7.3-rc1 2026-08-26 14:06:08 -07:00
edac
fault-injection nvme: add opcode filtering for fault injection 2026-08-19 07:51:23 -07:00
fb
features
filesystems A wide variety of mostly CephFS fixes and cleanups, split between 2026-08-28 11:51:05 -07:00
firmware_class
firmware-guide
fpga
gpu DRM Rust changes for v7.3-rc1 2026-08-10 14:48:11 +10:00
hid HID: add documentation and Coccinelle script for FF registration race 2026-08-14 14:46:20 +02:00
hwmon Char/Misc/IIO/etc driver update for 7.3-rc1 2026-08-25 09:38:50 -07:00
i2c
iio
images
infiniband
input
kbuild
kernel-hacking
leds
litmus-tests
livepatch
locking
maintainer
mhi
misc-devices
mm mm.git review status for linus..mm-stable 2026-08-27 09:17:06 -07:00
netlabel
netlink netlink: specs: add missing mask attributes for conntrack dump 2026-08-28 15:34:51 -07:00
networking docs: oa-tc6-framework: Fix link to specification 2026-08-20 13:31:54 -07:00
nvdimm
nvme
PCI Documentation: PCI: Document how to write PCI Host Controller drivers 2026-08-12 14:20:48 -05:00
pcmcia
peci
power
process Coccinelle patches for Linux v7.3 2026-08-30 10:42:40 -07:00
RCU
rust docs: rust: quick-start: remove Ubuntu 25.10 2026-08-10 06:44:10 +02:00
scheduler sched_ext: Fixes for v7.3-rc1 2026-08-31 13:13:35 -07:00
scsi scsi: leapraid: Standardize NCQ priority sysfs attributes 2026-08-23 21:57:41 -04:00
security Landlock update for v7.3-rc1 2026-08-21 12:28:35 -07:00
sound ALSA: usb-audio: Reverse MIXER_GET_CUR_BROKEN as MIXER_GET_CUR_OK 2026-08-23 11:03:34 +02:00
sphinx
sphinx-includes
sphinx-static
spi docs: spi: add documentation for userspace device instantiation 2026-08-06 19:13:15 +01:00
staging
sunrpc/xdr nfsd: add support to CB_NOTIFY for dir attribute changes 2026-08-10 09:54:35 -04:00
target
tee
timers
tools
trace perf tools updates for v7.3 2026-08-22 08:47:50 -07:00
translations irqdomain: Delete irq_domain_add_linear() 2026-09-04 08:40:07 +02:00
usb
userspace-api mm.git review status for linus..mm-stable 2026-08-27 09:17:06 -07:00
virt Arm: 2026-08-25 11:48:04 -07:00
w1
watchdog docs: watchdog: npcm: Add reset status description 2026-08-10 09:00:04 -07:00
wmi
.gitignore
.renames.txt
atomic_bitops.txt
atomic_t.txt
Changes
CodingStyle
conf.py docs: conf.py: fix the 'utf-8' typo 2026-08-11 10:45:54 -06:00
docutils.conf
index.rst
Kconfig
Makefile
memory-barriers.txt
SubmittingPatches
subsystem-apis.rst