linux/tools
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
..
accounting
arch - Remove the smp_locks alternatives machinery which was used to patch out lock 2026-08-18 18:11:25 -07:00
bootconfig Bootconfig updates for v7.3: 2026-08-25 08:59:09 -07:00
bpf perf tools updates for v7.3 2026-08-22 08:47:50 -07:00
build perf build: Remove leftover feature tests for removed cxx and clang support 2026-08-12 06:17:49 -07:00
certs
cgroup
counter
crypto
debugging driver core: add TAINT_FORCED_BIND for when userspace manually messes with devices and drivers 2026-09-18 18:24:41 +01:00
dma
docs doc tools: fix 'path' typos 2026-08-11 10:43:16 -06:00
firewire
firmware
gpio
hv
iio
include Including fixes from Bluetooth, IPSec and Netfilter. 2026-08-27 13:53:43 -07:00
kvm/kvm_stat
laptop
leds
lib More thermal control updates for 7.3-rc1 2026-08-26 14:21:30 -07:00
memory-model
mm mm.git review status for master..mm-nonmm-stable 2026-08-23 08:07:11 -07:00
net Including fixes from Bluetooth, IPSec and Netfilter. 2026-08-27 13:53:43 -07:00
objtool Rust fixes for v7.3 2026-08-30 09:47:39 -07:00
pcmcia
perf perf build: Add clang and rust target flags for LoongArch 2026-09-04 21:45:27 +08:00
platform/x86/amd
power
rcu
sched
sched_ext sched_ext: Check bpf_timer_start return values in scx_qmap 2026-08-31 06:47:39 -10:00
scripts perf tools updates for v7.3 2026-08-22 08:47:50 -07:00
sound
spi
testing bpf-fixes 2026-09-06 13:49:44 -07:00
thermal
time
tracing
unittests
usb
verification verification/rvgen: Use .old instead of .bak for kunit backup files 2026-08-25 13:56:53 +02:00
virtio tools/virtio: Fix control typo in trace agent comment 2026-08-19 06:38:48 -04:00
wmi
workqueue tools/workqueue/wq_dump.py: Support backward compatibility for wq->attrs rename 2026-08-31 10:17:08 -10:00
writeback
Makefile