Re: [PATCH 0/4] exportfs: add flag to allow marking export operations as only supporting file handles

Christian Brauner
2024-12-10T10:34:11Z

On Tue, Dec 10, 2024 at 11:13:16AM +0100, Christian Brauner wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 09, 2024 at 12:20:10PM -0500, Chuck Lever wrote:
> > On 12/9/24 12:15 PM, Jeff Layton wrote:
> > > On Mon, 2024-12-09 at 11:35 -0500, Chuck Lever wrote:
> > > > On 12/9/24 11:30 AM, Amir Goldstein wrote:
> > > > > On Mon, Dec 9, 2024 at 2:46 PM Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org> wrote:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > On Mon, Dec 09, 2024 at 09:58:58AM +0100, Amir Goldstein wrote:
> > > > > > > To be clear, exporting pidfs or internal shmem via an anonymous fd is
> > > > > > > probably not possible with existing userspace tools, but with all the new
> > > > > > > mount_fd and magic link apis, I can never be sure what can be made possible
> > > > > > > to achieve when the user holds an anonymous fd.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > The thinking behind adding the EXPORT_OP_LOCAL_FILE_HANDLE flag
> > > > > > > was that when kernfs/cgroups was added exportfs support with commit
> > > > > > > aa8188253474 ("kernfs: add exportfs operations"), there was no intention
> > > > > > > to export cgroupfs over nfs, only local to uses, but that was never enforced,
> > > > > > > so we thought it would be good to add this restriction and backport it to
> > > > > > > stable kernels.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Can you please explain what the problem with exporting these file
> > > > > > systems over NFS is? Yes, it's not going to be very useful. But what
> > > > > > is actually problematic about it? Any why is it not problematic with
> > > > > > a userland nfs server? We really need to settle that argumet before
> > > > > > deciding a flag name or polarity.
> > > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > I agree that it is not the end of the world and users do have to explicitly
> > > > > use fsid= argument to be able to export cgroupfs via nfsd.
> > > > >
> > > > > The idea for this patch started from the claim that Jeff wrote that cgroups
> > > > > is not allowed for nfsd export, but I couldn't find where it is not allowed.
> > > > >
> > >
> > > I think that must have been a wrong assumption on my part. I don't see
> > > anything that specifically prevents that either. If cgroupfs is mounted
> > > and you tell mountd to export it, I don't see what would prevent that.
> > >
> > > To be clear, I don't see how you would trick bog-standard mountd into
> > > exporting a filesystem that isn't mounted into its namespace, however.
> > > Writing a replacement for mountd is always a possibilty.
> > >
> > > > > I have no issue personally with leaving cgroupfs exportable via nfsd
> > > > > and changing restricting only SB_NOUSER and SB_KERNMOUNT fs.
> > > > >
> > > > > Jeff, Chuck, what is your opinion w.r.t exportability of cgroupfs via nfsd?
> > > >
> > > > We all seem to be hard-pressed to find a usage scenario where exporting
> > > > pseudo-filesystems via NFS is valuable. But maybe someone has done it
> > > > and has a good reason for it.
> > > >
> > > > The issue is whether such export should be consistently and actively
> > > > prevented.
> > > >
> > > > I'm not aware of any specific security issues with it.
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > > I'm not either, but we are in new territory here. nfsd is a network
> > > service, so it does present more of an attack surface vs. local access.
> > >
> > > In general, you do have to take active steps to export a filesystem,
> > > but if someone exports / with "crossmnt", everything mounted is
> > > potentially accessible. That's obviously a dumb thing to do, but people
> > > make mistakes, and it's possible that doing this could be part of a
> > > wider exploit.
> > >
> > > I tend to think it safest to make exporting via nfsd an opt-in thing on
> > > a per-fs basis (along the lines of this patchset). If someone wants to
> > > allow access to more "exotic" filesystems, let them argue their use-
> > > case on the list first.
> >
> > If we were starting from scratch, 100% agree.
> >
> > The current situation is that these file systems appear to be exportable
> > (and not only via NFS). The proposal is that this facility is to be
> > taken away. This can easily turn into a behavior regression for someone
> > if we're not careful.
>
> So I'm happy to drop the exportfs preliminary we have now preventing
> kernfs from being exported but then Christoph and you should figure out
> what the security implications of allowing kernfs instances to be
> exported areare because I'm not an NFS export expert.
>
> Filesystems that fall under kernfs that are exportable by NFS as I
> currently understand it are at least:
>
> (1) sysfs
> (2) cgroupfs
>
> Has anyone ever actually tried to export the two and tested what
> happens? Because I wouldn't be surprised if this ended in tears but
> maybe I'm overly pessimistic.
>
> Both (1) and (2) are rather special and don't have standard filesystem
> semantics in a few places.
>
> - cgroupfs isn't actually namespace aware. Whereas most filesystems like
> tmpfs and ramfs that are mountable inside unprivileged containers are
> multi-instance filesystems, aka allocate a new superblock per
> container cgroupfs is single-instance with a nasty implementation to
> virtualize the per-container view via cgroup namespaces. I wouldn't be
> surprised if that ends up being problematic.
>
> - Cgroupfs has write-time permission checks as the process that is moved
> into a cgroup isn't known at open time. That has been exploitable
> before this was fixed.
>
> - Even though it's legacy cgroup has a v1 and v2 mode where v1 is even
> more messed up than v2 including the release-agent logic which ends up
> issuing a usermode helper to call a binary when a cgroup is released.
>
> - sysfs potentially exposes all kinds of extremly low-level information
> to a remote machine.
>
> None of this gives me the warm and fuzzy. But that's just me.
>
> Otherwise, I don't understand what it means that a userspace NFS server
> can export kernfs instances. I don't know what that means and what the
> contrast to in-kernel NFS server export is and whether that has the same
> security implications. If so it's even scary that some random userspace
> NFS server can just expose guts like kernfs.
>
> But if both of you feel that this is safe to do and there aren't any
> security issues lurking that have gone unnoticed simply because no one
> has really ever exported sysfs or cgroupfs then by all means continue
> allowing that. I'm rather skeptical.

Amir pointed that sysfs can't be exported as it opts out of kernfs
export_operations being set.