[loeg]

Bits above 1<<11 (the non-permission bits) are not valid arguments to open(2), so I don't see what your point is. In this context, they are invalid. open(2) should reject values with bits outside of 07777 (== 0x0fff) set, including (mode_t)-1 (== 0xffff).

Here is the specific place where Linux truncates the bogus mode, instead of rejecting it: http://lxr.free-electrons.com/source/fs/open.c#L906

(S_IALLUGO defined here: http://lxr.free-electrons.com/source/include/linux/stat.h#L9 )

This change would fix this class of issue:

    --- a/fs/open.c
    +++ b/fs/open.c
    @@ -889,9 +889,11 @@ static inline int build_open_flags(int flags, umode_t mode, struct open_flags *o
            int lookup_flags = 0;
            int acc_mode = ACC_MODE(flags);
    
    -       if (flags & (O_CREAT | __O_TMPFILE))
    +       if (flags & (O_CREAT | __O_TMPFILE)) {
    +               if ((mode & ~S_IALLUGO) != 0)
    +                       return -EINVAL;
                    op->mode = (mode & S_IALLUGO) | S_IFREG;
    -       else
    +       } else
                    op->mode = 0;
    
            /* Must never be set by userspace */