v0 protocol: fix infinite loop when parsing multi-valued capabilities

If Git's client-side parsing of an upload-pack response (so git-fetch or
ls-remote) sees multiple instances of a single capability, it can enter
an infinite loop due to a bug in advancing the "offset" parameter in the
parser.

This bug can't happen between a client and server of the same Git
version. The client bug is in parse_feature_value() when the caller
passes in an offset parameter. And that only happens when the v0
protocol is parsing "symref" and "object-format" capabilities, via
next_server_feature_value(). But Git has never produced multiple
object-format capabilities, and it stopped producing multiple symref
values in d007dbf7d6 (Revert "upload-pack: send non-HEAD symbolic refs",
2013-11-18).

However, upload-pack did produce multiple symref entries for a while,
and they are valid. Plus other implementations, such as Dulwich will
still do so. So we should handle them. And even if we do not expect it,
it is obviously a bug for the parser to enter an infinite loop.

The bug itself is pretty simple. Commit 2c6a403d96 (connect: add
function to parse multiple v1 capability values, 2020-05-25) added the
"offset" parameter, which is used as both an in- and out-parameter. When
parsing the first "symref" capability, *offset will be 0 on input, and
after parsing the capability, we set *offset to an index just past the
value by taking a pointer difference "(value + end) - feature_list".

But on the second call, now *offset is set to that larger index, which
lets us skip past the first "symref" capability. However, we do so by
incrementing feature_list. That means our pointer difference is now too
small; it is counting from where we resumed parsing, not from the start
of the original feature_list pointer. And because we incremented
feature_list only inside our function, and not the caller, that
increment is lost next time the function is called.

One solution would be to account for those skipped bytes by incrementing
*offset, rather than assigning to it. But wait, there's more!

We also increment feature_list if we have a near-miss. Say we are
looking for "symref" and find "almost-symref". In that case we'll point
feature_list to the "y" in "almost-symref" and restart our search. But
that again means our offset won't be correct, as it won't account for
the bytes between the start of the string and that "y".

So instead, let's just record the beginning of the feature_list string
in a separate pointer that we never touch. That offset we take in and
return is meant to be using that point as a base, and now we'll do so
consistently.

Since the bug can't be reproduced using the current version of
git-upload-pack, we'll instead hard-code an input which triggers the
problem. Before this patch it loops forever re-parsing the second symref
entry. Now we check both that it finishes, and that it parses both
entries correctly (a case we could not test at all before).

We don't need to worry about testing v2 here; it communicates the
capabilities in a completely different way, and doesn't use this code at
all. There are tests earlier in t5512 that are meant to cover this (they
don't, but we'll address that in a future patch).

Reported-by: Jonas Haag <jonas@lophus.org>
Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

1 files changed, 3 insertions, 2 deletions

diff --git a/connect.c b/connect.c
index c0c8a38178..0dc739c4e5 100644
--- a/connect.c
+++ b/connect.c
@@ -597,6 +597,7 @@ struct ref **get_remote_refs(int fd_out, struct packet_reader *reader,
 
 const char *parse_feature_value(const char *feature_list, const char *feature, int *lenp, int *offset)
 {
+	const char *orig_start = feature_list;
 	int len;
 
 	if (!feature_list)
@@ -616,7 +617,7 @@ const char *parse_feature_value(const char *feature_list, const char *feature, i
 				if (lenp)
 					*lenp = 0;
 				if (offset)
-					*offset = found + len - feature_list;
+					*offset = found + len - orig_start;
 				return value;
 			}
 			/* feature with a value (e.g., "agent=git/1.2.3") */
@@ -628,7 +629,7 @@ const char *parse_feature_value(const char *feature_list, const char *feature, i
 				if (lenp)
 					*lenp = end;
 				if (offset)
-					*offset = value + end - feature_list;
+					*offset = value + end - orig_start;
 				return value;
 			}
 			/*