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

Andy Lutomirski
2015-02-27T20:57:06Z

On Fri, Feb 27, 2015 at 12:48 PM, Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz> wrote:
> On Fri 2015-02-27 12:15:15, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
>> On Thu, Feb 26, 2015 at 4:27 AM, Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz> wrote:
>> > On Wed 2015-02-25 17:59:04, Christoph Lameter wrote:
>> >> On Wed, 25 Feb 2015, Pavel Machek wrote:
>> >>
>> >> > One solution is to put capabilities into the elf executable. I believe
>> >> > there was patch for that. That means you don't need to add capability
>> >> > support into filesystems...
>> >>
>> >> Ummm... So I can just get any caps by modifying the ELF header?
>> >> Looking at the docs No, it just drops caps so binaries must be
>> >> setsuid.
>> >
>> > exactly. Normal apps are not currently allowed to receive
>> > capabilities, because they may not be ready for them.
>> >
>> > So add an elf note marking what capabilities it can deal with.
>> > No need for setuid if caller has the capabilities already.
>>
>> We'd need extremely broad coverage for this to be useful because of
>> shells, pipelines, scripts, etc. We'd need bash, env, python, etc.
>
> Well.. capabilities for scripts will be "fun" even when you have
> proper filesystem support. I'd say that is separate problem... (and
> yes, it would have to be solved.)

To me, however, the whole point of this thread is that you shouldn't
need filesystem support at all. If I have CAP_WHATEVER, I tell the
kernel that I want my children to have CAP_WHATEVER in their permitted
and effective sets, and I don't try to run a setuid or fP != 0
program, then it should just work.

The insertion of scripts in the way shouldn't matter.

--Andy

>
> --
> (english) http://www.livejournal.com/~pavelmachek
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--
Andy Lutomirski
AMA Capital Management, LLC