Re: [capabilities] Allow normal inheritance for a configurable set of capabilities

Serge E. Hallyn
2015-02-03T17:28:41Z

Quoting Casey Schaufler (casey@schaufler-ca.com):
> On 2/3/2015 7:51 AM, Serge E. Hallyn wrote:
> > Quoting Casey Schaufler (casey@schaufler-ca.com):
> >> On 2/2/2015 12:37 PM, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
> >>> On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 10:08 AM, Serge Hallyn <serge.hallyn@ubuntu.com> wrote:
> >>>> Quoting Casey Schaufler (casey@schaufler-ca.com):
> >>>>> I'm game to participate in such an effort. The POSIX scheme
> >>>>> is workable, but given that it's 20 years old and hasn't
> >>>>> developed real traction it's hard to call it successful.
> >>>> Over the years we've several times discussed possible reasons for this
> >>>> and how to help. I personally think it's two things: 1. lack of
> >>>> toolchain and fs support. The fact that we cannot to this day enable
> >>>> ping using capabilities by default because of cpio, tar and non-xattr
> >>>> filesystems is disheartening. 2. It's hard for users and applications
> >>>> to know what caps they need. yes the API is a bear to use, but we can
> >>>> hide that behind fancier libraries. But using capabilities requires too
> >>>> much in-depth knowledge of precisely what caps you might need for
> >>>> whatever operations library may now do when you asked for something.
> >>> None of this could address the problem here, though: if I hold a
> >>> capability and I want to pass that capability to an exec'd helper, I
> >>> shouldn't need the fs's help to do this.
> >> One of the holes in the 1003.1e spec is what to do with a program file
> >> that does not have a capability set attached to it. The two options are
> >> drop all capabilities and leave the capabilities alone. The latter gives
> >> you what you're asking for. The former is arguably safer.
> > Hm, so if we were to change that, what should we do in the case of (a)
> > an fs which doesn't support xattrs,
>
> You have two choices, really. The first is to treat the files on that
> filesystem as having no xattrs, thus they have the inheritable behavior.
> The alternative is to default to some value for the filesystem (Smack
> does this) which may or may not be provided in the mount options.
>
> > (2) expanding a tarball/cpio which
> > didn't have xattrs (should tar/cpio fill them in with empty sets?),
> > and
>
> Files get no capability sets, hence the inheriting behavior.
>
> > (3) do we add a default empty set in the case of an fs mounted with
> > NOSUID?
>
> No, I think that is the opposite of what NOSUID is trying to do.
> For the capability behavior to match the setuid bit behavior all
> files will be inheriting, as if they had no capability set. It would
> be safer to pretend there is an empty set, but that's not what
> NOSUID does.
>
> > It's an interesting notion.
>
> It's what we did in Trusted Irix. It made life much easier.

Is there any chance you'd have time to write a patch to implement this?

(I wasn't going to ask bc I assumed not, but heck maybe you're bored
on a desert island or snowed in and just looking for an excuse to hack :)

-serge