FUSE Trust Boundary Attack: Malicious Daemon i_size Desync → Kernel Heap Overflow via finit_module & kexec

FUSE daemons control filesystem metadata returned to the kernel via vfs_getattr — including i_size. Setting i_size to an inflated value desynchronizes the kernel’s allocation (kmalloc based on reported size) from its ingestion (copy_from_user of actual bytes), creating a heap under-allocation. kernel_read_file() callers — finit_module(2), firmware loader, kexec_file_load(2) — are turned into kmalloc-4k SLUB slab overflow primitives. VFS trust inversion architecture, TOCTOU window analysis, and virtio-fs shared-memory attack surface covered.

April 29, 2026 · 11 min · JM00NJ
FUSE Trust Boundary Attack: Malicious Daemon i_size Desync → Kernel Heap Overflow via finit_module & kexec
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