Re: [PATCH 2/2] groups: Allow unprivileged processes to use setgroups to drop groups

Andy Lutomirski
2014-11-17T22:52:09Z

On Mon, Nov 17, 2014 at 2:41 PM, Eric W.Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com> wrote:
>
>
> On November 17, 2014 1:46:59 PM EST, Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net> wrote:
>>On Mon, Nov 17, 2014 at 10:31 AM, Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net>
>>wrote:
>>> On Mon, Nov 17, 2014 at 10:06 AM, Casey Schaufler
>>> <casey@schaufler-ca.com> wrote:
>>>> On 11/15/2014 1:01 AM, Josh Triplett wrote:
>>>>> Currently, unprivileged processes (without CAP_SETGID) cannot call
>>>>> setgroups at all. In particular, processes with a set of
>>supplementary
>>>>> groups cannot further drop permissions without obtaining elevated
>>>>> permissions first.
>>>>
>>>> Has anyone put any thought into how this will interact with
>>>> POSIX ACLs? I don't see that anywhere in the discussion.
>>>
>>> That means that user namespaces are a problem, too, and we need to
>>fix
>>> it. Or we should add some control to turn unprivileged user
>>namespace
>>> creation on and off and document that turning it on defeats POSIX
>>ACLs
>>> with a group entry that is more restrictive than the other entry.
>>>
>>
>>This is a significant enough issue that I posted it to oss-security:
>>
>>http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2014/11/17/19
>>
>>It's not at all obvious to me how to fix it. We could disallow userns
>>creation of any supplementary groups don't match fsuid, or we could
>>keep negative-only groups around in the userns.
>>
>>It may be worth adding a sysctl to change the behavior, too. IMO it's
>>absurd to use groups to deny permissions that are otherwise available.
>
> There is an obvious user namespace fix. Don't allow dropping supplemental groups that are not mapped.

Why exactly does this fix it? I guess that, if a supplementary group
is in your subgid list, then we can assume that dropping it is safe?

>
> That will require a little bit of fancy footwork if you want to play with supplemental groups in your unprivileged user namespace. I would like to get a grip on what hoops would be required before we add the additional restriction. Possibly something as simple as calling sg.

The main hoop I can think of is that setgroups would be impossible to
call if you have an unmapped supplementary group. This could break
all kinds of things.

>
> I also want to look at what Tizen and any other concrete pieces of code I can find using this negative permission pattern are actually doing. Bugs definitely exist, but I have this erie feeling that the bugs may be in instances of userspace using this negative group permission pattern. I think we may have a hideous case of one setuid binary defeating a privilege check of another piece of code.
>
> This issue looks like it is worth a full scale investigation. Sigh.

Agreed.

>
> Eric

--
Andy Lutomirski
AMA Capital Management, LLC