Re: [PATCH v1 0/1] ioctl to disallow detaching kernel USB drivers

[Krzysztof Opasiak <k.opasiak@samsung.com>]

On 11/30/2015 05:16 PM, Alan Stern wrote:
> On Fri, 27 Nov 2015, Krzysztof Opasiak wrote:
>
>>>> I run through your code and as far as I understand above is not exactly
>>>> true. Your patch allows only to prevent userspace from accessing interfaces
>>>> which has kernel drivers, there is no way to stop an application from taking
>>>> control over all free interfaces.
>>>>
>>>> Let's say that your device has 3 interfaces. First of them has a kernel
>>>> driver but second and third doesn't. You have 2 apps. One should communicate
>>>> using second interface and another one third. But first app is malicious and
>>>> it claims all free interfaces of received device (your patch doesn't prevent
>>>> this). And when second app starts it is unable to do anything with the
>>>> device because all interfaces are taken. How would you like to handle this?
>>>
>>> You can't, and why would you ever want to, as you can't tell what an app
>>> "should" or "should not" do.  If you really care about this, then use a
>>> LSM policy to prevent this.
>>
>> Well, an app can declare what it does and what it needs in it's manifest
>> file (or some equivalent of this) and the platform should ensure that
>> app can do only what it has declared.
>>
>> I would really like to use LSM policy in here but currently it is
>> impossible as one device node represents whole device. Permissions (even
>> those from LSM) are being checked only on open() not on each ioctl() so
>> as far as I know there is nothing which prevents any owner of opened fd
>> to claim all available (not taken by someone else) interfaces and LSM
>> policy is unable to filter those calls (unless we add some LSM hooks
>> over there).
>
> How about this approach?  Once a process has dropped its usbfs
> privileges, it's not allowed to claim any interfaces (either explicitly
> or implicitly).  Instead, it or some manager program must claim the
> appropriate interfaces before dropping privileges.
>

I agree that restricting interface claiming only to privileged process 
is a good idea. Unfortunately this generates a problem when program 
needs more than one interface (like in cdc - data + control for 
example). We need to declare both of them in first call to "usb-manager" 
or reopen the dev node at second call and claim all interfaces claimed 
using this fd till now and claim one more and then drop privileges and 
send a new fd.

Maybe better option would be to add optional argument to claim interface 
ioctl() and allow to claim interface for other fd than the current one? 
So "usb-manager" could have fd with full control and claim interfaces 
for apps which have fds with restricted privileges.

Best regards,
-- 
Krzysztof Opasiak
Samsung R&D Institute Poland
Samsung Electronics