In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

apparmor: avoid crash when parsed profile name is empty

When processing a packed profile in unpack_profile() described like

“profile :ns::samba-dcerpcd /usr/lib*/samba/{,samba/}samba-dcerpcd {…}”

a string “:samba-dcerpcd” is unpacked as a fully-qualified name and then
passed to aa_splitn_fqname().

aa_splitn_fqname() treats “:samba-dcerpcd” as only containing a namespace.
Thus it returns NULL for tmpname, meanwhile tmpns is non-NULL. Later
aa_alloc_profile() crashes as the new profile name is NULL now.

general protection fault, probably for non-canonical address 0xdffffc0000000000: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP KASAN NOPTI
KASAN: null-ptr-deref in range [0x0000000000000000-0x0000000000000007]
CPU: 6 PID: 1657 Comm: apparmor_parser Not tainted 6.7.0-rc2-dirty #16
Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996), BIOS rel-1.16.2-3-gd478f380-rebuilt.opensuse.org 04/01/2014
RIP: 0010:strlen+0x1e/0xa0
Call Trace:
<TASK>
? strlen+0x1e/0xa0
aa_policy_init+0x1bb/0x230
aa_alloc_profile+0xb1/0x480
unpack_profile+0x3bc/0x4960
aa_unpack+0x309/0x15e0
aa_replace_profiles+0x213/0x33c0
policy_update+0x261/0x370
profile_replace+0x20e/0x2a0
vfs_write+0x2af/0xe00
ksys_write+0x126/0x250
do_syscall_64+0x46/0xf0
entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x6e/0x76
</TASK>
—–[ end trace 0000000000000000 ]—-
RIP: 0010:strlen+0x1e/0xa0

It seems such behaviour of aa_splitn_fqname() is expected and checked in
other places where it is called (e.g. aa_remove_profiles). Well, there
is an explicit comment “a ns name without a following profile is allowed”
inside.

AFAICS, nothing can prevent unpacked “name” to be in form like
”:samba-dcerpcd” – it is passed from userspace.

Deny the whole profile set replacement in such case and inform user with
EPROTO and an explaining message.

Found by Linux Verification Center (linuxtesting.org).