Re: [PATCH 3/4] proc: io_accounting: Use new infrastructure to fix deadlocks in execve

Eric W. Biederman
2020-03-10T21:27:32Z

Bernd Edlinger <bernd.edlinger@hotmail.de> writes:

> On 3/10/20 8:06 PM, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
>> Bernd Edlinger <bernd.edlinger@hotmail.de> writes:
>>
>>> This changes do_io_accounting to use the new exec_update_mutex
>>> instead of cred_guard_mutex.
>>>
>>> This fixes possible deadlocks when the trace is accessing
>>> /proc/$pid/io for instance.
>>>
>>> This should be safe, as the credentials are only used for reading.
>>
>> This is an improvement.
>>
>> We probably want to do this just as an incremental step in making things
>> better but perhaps I am blind but I am not finding the reason for
>> guarding this with the cred_guard_mutex to be at all persuasive.
>>
>> I think moving the ptrace_may_access check down to after the
>> unlock_task_sighand would be just as effective at addressing the
>> concerns raised in the original commit. I think the task_lock provides
>> all of the barrier we need to make it safe to move the ptrace_may_access
>> checks safe.
>>
>> The reason I say this is I don't see exec changing ->ioac. Just
>> performing some I/O which would update the io accounting statistics.
>>
>
> Maybe the suid executable is starting up and doing io or not,
> and what the program does immediately at startup is a secret,
> that we want to keep secret but evil eve want to find out.
> eve is using /proc/alice/io to do that.
>
> It is a bit constructed, but seems like a security concern.
> when we keep the exec_update_mutex while collecting the data, we
> cannot see any io of the new process when the new credentials
> don't allow that.

Jann Horn has convinced me we should just convert these to the
exec_change_mutex today. Because while not 100% correct in theory, the
only really interesting case is exec. So the code does something
interesting and worth while, and mostly correct. The last thing I want
to do is to cause an unnecessary regression.

Eric