Re: [PATCH v8 1/2] seccomp: add a return code to trap to userspace

Kees Cook
2018-10-30T22:35:01Z

On Tue, Oct 30, 2018 at 3:32 PM, Tycho Andersen <tycho@tycho.ws> wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 30, 2018 at 03:00:17PM -0700, Kees Cook wrote:
>> On Tue, Oct 30, 2018 at 2:54 PM, Tycho Andersen <tycho@tycho.ws> wrote:
>> > On Tue, Oct 30, 2018 at 02:49:21PM -0700, Kees Cook wrote:
>> >> On Mon, Oct 29, 2018 at 3:40 PM, Tycho Andersen <tycho@tycho.ws> wrote:
>> >> > * switch to a flags based future-proofing mechanism for struct
>> >> > seccomp_notif and seccomp_notif_resp, thus avoiding version issues
>> >> > with structure length (Kees)
>> >> [...]
>> >> >
>> >> > +struct seccomp_notif {
>> >> > + __u64 id;
>> >> > + __u32 pid;
>> >> > + __u32 flags;
>> >> > + struct seccomp_data data;
>> >> > +};
>> >> > +
>> >> > +struct seccomp_notif_resp {
>> >> > + __u64 id;
>> >> > + __s64 val;
>> >> > + __s32 error;
>> >> > + __u32 flags;
>> >> > +};
>> >>
>> >> Hrm, so, what's the plan for when struct seccomp_data changes size?
>> >
>> > I guess my plan was don't ever change the size again, just use flags
>> > and have extra state available via ioctl().
>> >
>> >> I'm realizing that it might be "too late" for userspace to discover
>> >> it's running on a newer kernel. i.e. it gets a user notification, and
>> >> discovers flags it doesn't know how to handle. Do we actually need
>> >> both flags AND a length? Designing UAPI is frustrating! :)
>> >
>> > :). I don't see this as such a big problem -- in fact it's better than
>> > the length mode, where you don't know what you don't know, because it
>> > only copied as much info as you could handle. Older userspace would
>> > simply not use information it didn't know how to use.
>> >
>> >> Do we need another ioctl to discover the seccomp_data size maybe?
>> >
>> > That could be an option as well, assuming we agree that size would
>> > work, which I thought we didn't?
>>
>> Size alone wasn't able to determine the layout of the seccomp_notif
>> structure since it had holes (in the prior version). seccomp_data
>> doesn't have holes and is likely to change in size (see the recent
>> thread on adding the MPK register to it...)
>
> Oh, sorry, I misread this as seccomp_notif, not seccomp_data.
>
>> I'm trying to imagine the right API for this. A portable user of
>> seccomp_notif expects the id/pid/flags/data to always be in the same
>> place, but it's the size of seccomp_data that may change. So it wants
>> to allocate space for seccomp_notif header and "everything else", of
>> which is may only understand the start of seccomp_data (and ignore any
>> new trailing fields).
>>
>> So... perhaps the "how big are things?" ioctl would report the header
>> size and the seccomp_data size. Then both are flexible. And flags
>> would be left as a way to "version" the header?
>>
>> Any Linux API list members want to chime in here?
>
> So:
>
> struct seccomp_notify_sizes {
> u16 seccomp_notify;
> u16 seccomp_data;
> };
>
> ioctl(fd, SECCOMP_IOCTL_GET_SIZE, &sizes);
>
> This would be only one extra syscall over the lifetime of the listener
> process, which doesn't seem too bad. One thing that's slightly
> annoying is that you can't do it until you actually get an event, so
> maybe it could be a command on the seccomp syscall instead:
>
> seccomp(SECCOMP_GET_NOTIF_SIZES, 0, &sizes);

Yeah, top-level makes more sense. u16 seems fine too.

--
Kees Cook