Re: [PATCH] reiserfs: replace deprecated strncpy with scnprintf

From: Kees Cook
Date: Thu Mar 28 2024 - 18:06:12 EST


On Thu, Mar 28, 2024 at 09:16:52PM +0000, Justin Stitt wrote:
> strncpy() is deprecated for use on NUL-terminated destination strings
> [1] and as such we should prefer more robust and less ambiguous string
> interfaces.
>
> Our goal here is to get @namebuf populated with @name's contents but
> surrounded with quotes. There is some careful handling done to ensure we
> properly truncate @name so that we have room for a literal quote as well
> as a NUL-term. All this careful handling can be done with scnprintf
> using the dynamic string width specifier %.*s which allows us to pass in
> the max size for a source string. Doing this, we can put literal quotes
> in our format specifier and ensure @name is truncated to fit inbetween
> these quotes (-3 is from 2 quotes + 1 NUL-byte).
>
> All in all, we get to remove a deprecated use of strncpy and clean up
> this code nicely!
>
> Link: https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/deprecated.html#strncpy-on-nul-terminated-strings [1]
> Link: https://manpages.debian.org/testing/linux-manual-4.8/strscpy.9.en.html [2]
> Link: https://github.com/KSPP/linux/issues/90
> Cc: linux-hardening@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Signed-off-by: Justin Stitt <justinstitt@xxxxxxxxxx>

Yeah, I like the use of %.*s here. This is much more clear now I think.

Reviewed-by: Kees Cook <keescook@xxxxxxxxxxxx>

--
Kees Cook