Currently, misc_deregister() uses list_del() to remove the device
from the list. After list_del(), the list pointers are set to
LIST_POISON1 and LIST_POISON2, which may help catch use-after-free bugs,
but does not reset the list head.
If misc_deregister() is called more than once on the same device,
list_empty() will not return true, and list_del() may be called again,
leading to undefined behavior.
Replace list_del() with list_del_init() to reinitialize the list head
after deletion. This makes the code more robust against double
deregistration and allows safe usage of list_empty() on the miscdevice
after deregistration.
[ Note, this seems to keep broken out-of-tree drivers from doing foolish
things. While this does not matter for any in-kernel drivers,
external drivers could use a bit of help to show them they shouldn't
be doing stuff like re-registering misc devices - gregkh ]
Signed-off-by: Xion Wang <xion.wang@mediatek.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20250904063714.28925-2-xion.wang@mediatek.com
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
void misc_deregister(struct miscdevice *misc)
{
mutex_lock(&misc_mtx);
- list_del(&misc->list);
+ list_del_init(&misc->list);
device_destroy(&misc_class, MKDEV(MISC_MAJOR, misc->minor));
misc_minor_free(misc->minor);
if (misc->minor > MISC_DYNAMIC_MINOR)