#1057355 libmpfr6: major formatted output function bugs with %c and the value 0

Package:
libmpfr6
Source:
libmpfr6
Description:
multiple precision floating-point computation
Submitter:
Vincent Lefevre
Date:
2025-04-11 14:51:03 UTC
Severity:
normal
Tags:
#1057355#5
Date:
2023-12-03 21:13:03 UTC
From:
To:
I've reported the following bug in the MPFR mailing-list. I think
I've fixed the issues on the MPFR side in master, but MPFR is still
affected by the bug on the GMP side (gmp_vasprintf):

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1057344

The vasprintf.c code (for the formatted output functions) does not
handle null characters correctly. These characters can occur by
using %c with the value 0.

This is shown by the check_null tsprintf.c test:

https://gitlab.inria.fr/mpfr/mpfr/-/commit/78e72e6538fabc1b720d97e862ec45354e5c9c3f

The possible consequences are:
  - possible memory corruption with custom memory allocators that
    do not ignore the size parameter of the "free" function;
  - a part of the buffer fails to be overwritten (with possible
    security issues if the buffer contains sensitive data that
    were expected to be overwritten);
  - an assertion failure when GNU MPFR has been configured with
    assertion checking (--enable-assert).

Note that some of these issues partly come from a bug in gmp_vasprintf
(such as the incorrect return value), which I've reported here:

https://gmplib.org/list-archives/gmp-bugs/2023-December/005420.html

I think that I have fixed these issues on the MPFR side with

https://gitlab.inria.fr/mpfr/mpfr/-/commit/390e51ef8570da4e338e9806ecaf2d022210d951

but the first two consequences remain due to the gmp_vasprintf bug.

#1057355#10
Date:
2023-12-15 03:53:51 UTC
From:
To:
Control: tags -1 fixed-upstream

The gmp_vasprintf function is actually correct (but its documentation
is not; and it is gmp_sprintf that is incorrect, which is not a
problem for MPFR). I've fixed the remaining bugs in MPFR.

#1057355#17
Date:
2025-03-23 10:17:52 UTC
From:
To:
Hi Vincent,

On Fri, 15 Dec 2023 04:53:51 +0100 Vincent Lefevre <vincent@vinc17.net> wrote:

In which version is this fixed? 4.2.2?

Paul

#1057355#22
Date:
2025-03-23 10:37:45 UTC
From:
To:
Hi Paul,

Yes, it is fixed in 4.2.2, but this assumes that GMP does not use
its buggy vsnprintf replacement (i.e. it uses either the system
vsnprintf function or the replacement that was patched one year
ago in the development branch). I suppose that for Debian, the
system vsnprintf function is used on all platforms (this is decided
at GMP build time, after some tests for C conformance in GMP's
configure script).

If the buggy vsnprintf replacement is used, the MPFR testsuite would
fail. I've put the following section in the INSTALL file about such
a failure:
------------------------------------------------------------------------ tfprintf and tsprintf failures in check_null -------------------------------------------- If you get the failures $ ./tfprintf Error in test #40: mpfr_vfprintf printed 1 characters instead of 4 $ ./tsprintf Error in check_null, i = 0 expected r = 1, s = { 0, 0, 1 } got r = 0, s = { 0, 1, 1 } the cause is probably that GMP uses a buggy vsnprintf replacement. The reason GMP uses its own vsnprintf replacement is that during configure, it detected that the vsnprintf function from the C library is buggy. But the replacement from GMP 6.3.0 and below also has its own bugs. This means that using the formatted output functions with %c and the value 0 will yield an erratic behavior. For the above issue, this is fixed in the GMP development branch: https://gmplib.org/repo/gmp/rev/4ac76064639e You can have details at https://gmplib.org/list-archives/gmp-bugs/2023-December/005420.html https://gitlab.inria.fr/mpfr/mpfr/-/commit/390e51ef85 These tests can be skipped by defining the MPFR_TESTS_SKIP_CHECK_NULL macro, but you should rather get a fixed vsnprintf replacement. ------------------------------------------------------------------------
#1057355#27
Date:
2025-04-11 14:19:28 UTC
From:
To:
Hi,

On Sun, 23 Mar 2025 11:37:45 +0100 Vincent Lefevre <vincent@vinc17.net> wrote:

I was able to successfully build mpfr4_4.2.2-1.dsc using sbuild. I can
see that "make check" is invoked as part of that and the "tfprintf" and
"tsprintf" test cases pass. So it seems like this bug can be closed.

Best Regards,
Fiona

#1057355#32
Date:
2025-04-11 14:48:54 UTC
From:
To:
Version: 4.2.2-1

Yes, the MPFR behavior concerning %c and the value 0 should not be
affected by the GMP bug in Debian, where vsnprintf is expected to
be correct on all architectures.

So, closing.