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diff: `-t --tabsize=<huge>` aborts in `do_expand_tabs`

Aperta
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Valutazione

Difficoltà
3/5
Tempo stimato
1-2 giorni
Idoneità per principianti
65/100
Tipo di issue
Bug
Chiarezza
Specificata chiaramente
Stato di attività
Attiva
Stack tecnologico
rust
Ambito
cli

Direzione di ricerca

The bug is in src/utils.rs in the do_expand_tabs function. Start by reading the function to understand how tabsize is used in capacity calculations at lines 20 and 31. Look for where tabsize is parsed from the command line to see if bounds checking is missing. Write a test that reproduces the abort with large tabsize values, then add validation to limit tabsize to a safe maximum or handle allocation failures gracefully.

Scritto dal modello di indicizzazione a partire dal testo della issue.

Descrizione

--tabsize is parsed into a usize with no upper bound and then used to size an allocation: do_expand_tabs reserves line.len() + ntabs * (tabsize - 1) bytes or every line containing a tab. A large --tabsize makes that request exceed what the allocator can serve and the process aborts with no diff: diagnostic.

$ printf '\tx\n' > a; printf 'y\n' > b
$ diff -t --tabsize=18446744073709551615 a b > /dev/null
Aborted (core dumped)
$ echo $?
134

The threshold is the allocator, not a parse guard — the request scales directly
with the flag:

$ diff -t --tabsize=1000000000          a b   # 1e9  -> exit 1, diffs normally
$ diff -t --tabsize=4611686018427387904 a b   # 2^62
memory allocation of 4611686018427387905 bytes failed   -> exit 134
$ diff -t --tabsize=9223372036854775807 a b   # isize::MAX -> exit 134

A tab in the input is required — ntabs == 0 returns early.

Root cause

src/utils.rs:

pub fn do_expand_tabs(line: &[u8], tabsize: usize) -> Vec<u8> {
    let tab = b'\t';
    let ntabs = line.iter().filter(|c| **c == tab).count();
    if ntabs == 0 {
        return line.to_vec();
    }
    let mut result = Vec::with_capacity(line.len() + ntabs * (tabsize - 1));  // :20
    let mut offset = 0;

    let mut iter = line.split(|c| *c == tab).peekable();
    while let Some(chunk) = iter.next() {
        ...
        if iter.peek().is_some() {
            result.resize(result.len() + tabsize - offset % tabsize, b' ');    // :31

tabsize comes straight from --tabsize and multiplies the tab count. Nothing bounds it at parse time, so the capacity is attacker-chosen and the allocation aborts.

The same function aborts at a second site, src/utils.rs:31. Once the with_capacity at :20 is survived, the per-chunk result.resize(result.len() + tabsize - offset % tabsize, b' ') requests another attacker-sized allocation. Which of the two fires depends on the --tabsize value:

# :20  — capacity overflow (tabsize = 2^63)
$ diffutils diff -t --tabsize=9223372036854775808 a b
thread 'main' panicked at library/alloc/src/raw_vec/mod.rs:...: capacity overflow
$ echo $?
134

# :31  — allocation abort (tabsize = u64::MAX)
$ printf '\tx\n' > a; printf 'y\n' > b
$ diffutils diff -t --tabsize=18446744073709551615 a b
thread 'main' panicked at library/alloc/src/raw_vec/mod.rs:28:5:
$ echo $?
134
Lingua principale
Rust
Stelle
277
Fork
40
Merge medio
4g 12h
PR unite (30g)
3

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