Mark Brand reports that a NEEDS_SYSCALL_FOR_CMPXCHG enabled kernel would
open a security hole in the ghost syscall used to implement cmpxchg, as
it fails to validate the user pointer.
However, in order for this option to be enabled, you'd need to be
building a pre-ARMv6 kernel with SMP support. There is only one system
known which fits that, which is an early ARM SMP FPGA implementation
based on the ARM926T.
In any case, the Kconfig does not allow SMP to be enabled for pre-ARMv6
systems.
Moreover, even if NEEDS_SYSCALL_FOR_CMPXCHG were to be enabled, the
kernel would not build as __ARM_NR_cmpxchg64 is not defined.
The simple answer is to remove the buggy code.
Reported-by: Mark Brand <markbrand@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Russell King <rmk+kernel@arm.linux.org.uk>
db695c0509