Re: [PATCH] scaled-back caps, take 4 (was Re: [PATCH] capabilites, take 2)

From: Chris Wright
Date: Tue May 18 2004 - 20:29:21 EST


* Andy Lutomirski (luto@xxxxxxxxxxxx) wrote:
> Chris Wright wrote:
> > Alright, I tried to write up my expectations for all the various modes
> > w.r.t dropping privs, keeping them, setuid apps, etc. I then wrote some
> > tests to get a baseline, and well as a way to compare results. Finally
> > I wrote a patch that meets the requirements I laid out, and compared it
> > against yours. With one minor exception, the capabilities bits match
> > up. You drop effective caps when a non-root users execs a non-root
> > setuid app, and I the caps alone. ...
>
> Paranoia. There are legacy setuid programs out there (presumably even
> setuid-nonroot). Let's make them behave as closely to the way they
> currently do as possible.

Yes, that's the goal I have. Although, the above scenario, they've
already been limited (IOW, if nothing's been touched, all behaves the
same). Starting with limited inheritable (as say uid 500), execute
a non-root, setuid (say uid 99) program, is this expected to change
effective set? Currently it's a transition for 0 caps to 0 caps, not
very interesting. Given they are both unprivelged uids, I kept
the (limited) effective.

> > # Still w/out changing inheritable and with KEEPCAPS set
> > # 10 Root process does setuid(!0), effective caps are dropped
> > # 11 Root process does seteuid(!0), effective caps are dropped
> > # 12 Nonroot process restores uid 0, effective restored to permitted
>
> I still want some variant on KEEPCAPS that causes setxuid to leave caps
> completely alone. Oh, well.

Yeah, digs hole deeper though.

> > # 18 Non-root execs setuid-nonroot process, new caps bound by inheritable
>
> What new caps?

The caps in the newly exec'd process. IOW, effective aren't dropped,
but as you'd expect inheritable provides limit.

> >>+ /* Pretend we have VFS capabilities */
> >>+ if ((bprm->secflags & BINPRM_SEC_SETUID) && bprm->e_uid == 0)
> >>+ cap_set_full(bprm->cap_permitted);
> >>+ else
> >>+ cap_clear(bprm->cap_permitted);
> >>+
> >
> >
> > Thus far we've kept all this stuff out of core. I believe we should
> > keep it that way. This could easily be left in bprm_set().
>
> True. But as long as linux_binprm has fields for this stuff, intuitively
> it should always be filled in (i.e. not just in commoncap). That way we
> can say that commoncap doesn't get special treatment :)
>
> Also, this seems like the right place to check for VFS caps. This way we can.

This does change the current notion of layering. I see your point though,
likening it to say reading inode and finding S_ISUID bit.

> >>+ * The rules of Linux capabilities (not POSIX!)
> >>+ *
> >>+ * What the masks mean:
> >>+ * pP = capabilities that this process has
> >>+ * pE = capabilities that this process has and are enabled
> >>+ * (so pE <= pP)
> >>+ *
> >>+ * The capability evolution rules are:
> >>+ *
> >>+ * pP' = ((fP & cap_bset) | pP) & Y
> >>+ * pE' = (pE | fP) & pP'
> >>+ *
> >>+ * X = cap_bset
> >>+ * Y is zero if uid!=0, euid==0, and setuid non-root
> >>+ *
> >>+ * Exception: if setuid-nonroot, then pE' is reset to 0.
> >
> > While this works fine, I was interested to see what we could do to
> > leave the old algorithm. Seems both work out fine.
> >
> >>+ /* setuid-nonroot is special. */
> >>+ if (is_setuid && bprm->e_uid != 0 && current->uid != 0 &&
> >>+ current->euid == 0)
> >>+ cap_clear(new_pP);
> >
> >
> > setuid-nonroot from a non-root user needs to clear effective?
>
> Yes. Say user 500 runs a setuid-root program, which goes back and runs a
> setuid-500 program. uid==euid==500 now, so the program expects to be
> unprivileged. This makes that work. (I'm assuming you meant permitted.
> Effective gets cleared in cap_mask(new_pE, new_pP)).

Yup, I see. This works in my patch as well. I'll add this test. Also
added test to check disabling priv escalation during ptrace of setuid
app.

> The reason I killed the old algorithm is because it's scary (in the sense
> of being complicated and subtle for no good reason) and because I don't see
> the point of inheritable caps. I doubt anything uses them currently on a
> vanilla kernel because they don't _do_ anything. So I killed them.

This does break all those caps aware apps (yeah, tongue-in-cheek ;-)
that actually have the idea to widen the effective set, yet limit the
inheriable set. Seriously, I don't know how much this matters.

thanks,
-chris
--
Linux Security Modules http://lsm.immunix.org http://lsm.bkbits.net
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