Stable kernel 2.6.27.5

If you're right that there's nothing outside this function to protect the state it's inspecting, (ie the target process might start running) since that's the only way for this value to become "untrusted" then the i386 code is exactly the right place to look, since that takes the proper care of ordering e.g.

sp = p->thread.sp;
if (!stack_page || sp < stack_page || sp > top_esp+stack_page)
return 0;

We have to stash the stack pointer because otherwise the other process can race us, changing it just after we confirm that it's inside bounds and before we dereference it. Similarly with results read from the stack, although the x86-64 code gets the latter right already.

But really I don't have enough information to make a good judgement about how much paranoia is justified. What locks is a caller of get_wchan expected to hold? Can this process structure go away from underneath us while we're executing? What about the associated stack?