From b0de59b5733d18b0d1974a060860a8b5c1b36a2e Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Jiri Slaby Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2013 15:25:05 +0100 Subject: [PATCH] TTY: do not update atime/mtime on read/write On http://vladz.devzero.fr/013_ptmx-timing.php, we can see how to find out length of a password using timestamps of /dev/ptmx. It is documented in "Timing Analysis of Keystrokes and Timing Attacks on SSH". To avoid that problem, do not update time when reading from/writing to a TTY. I am afraid of regressions as this is a behavior we have since 0.97 and apps may expect the time to be current, e.g. for monitoring whether there was a change on the TTY. Now, there is no change. So this would better have a lot of testing before it goes upstream. References: CVE-2013-0160 Signed-off-by: Jiri Slaby Cc: stable # after 3.9 is out Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman --- drivers/tty/tty_io.c | 8 ++------ 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-) diff --git a/drivers/tty/tty_io.c b/drivers/tty/tty_io.c index 54a254ab85c7..8f44d627ccea 100644 --- a/drivers/tty/tty_io.c +++ b/drivers/tty/tty_io.c @@ -977,8 +977,7 @@ static ssize_t tty_read(struct file *file, char __user *buf, size_t count, else i = -EIO; tty_ldisc_deref(ld); - if (i > 0) - inode->i_atime = current_fs_time(inode->i_sb); + return i; } @@ -1079,11 +1078,8 @@ static inline ssize_t do_tty_write( break; cond_resched(); } - if (written) { - struct inode *inode = file->f_path.dentry->d_inode; - inode->i_mtime = current_fs_time(inode->i_sb); + if (written) ret = written; - } out: tty_write_unlock(tty); return ret; -- 2.20.1