Re: [PATCH v4 0/4] Introduce security_create_user_ns()

Serge E. Hallyn
2022-08-14T16:21:18Z

On Mon, Aug 08, 2022 at 03:16:16PM -0400, Paul Moore wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 8, 2022 at 2:56 PM Eric W. Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com> wrote:
> > Paul Moore <paul@paul-moore.com> writes:
> > > On Mon, Aug 1, 2022 at 10:56 PM Eric W. Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com> wrote:
> > >> Frederick Lawler <fred@cloudflare.com> writes:
> > >>
> > >> > While creating a LSM BPF MAC policy to block user namespace creation, we
> > >> > used the LSM cred_prepare hook because that is the closest hook to prevent
> > >> > a call to create_user_ns().
> > >>
> > >> Re-nack for all of the same reasons.
> > >> AKA This can only break the users of the user namespace.
> > >>
> > >> Nacked-by: "Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@xmission.com>
> > >>
> > >> You aren't fixing what your problem you are papering over it by denying
> > >> access to the user namespace.
> > >>
> > >> Nack Nack Nack.
> > >>
> > >> Stop.
> > >>
> > >> Go back to the drawing board.
> > >>
> > >> Do not pass go.
> > >>
> > >> Do not collect $200.
> > >
> > > If you want us to take your comments seriously Eric, you need to
> > > provide the list with some constructive feedback that would allow
> > > Frederick to move forward with a solution to the use case that has
> > > been proposed. You response above may be many things, but it is
> > > certainly not that.
> >
> > I did provide constructive feedback. My feedback to his problem
> > was to address the real problem of bugs in the kernel.
>
> We've heard from several people who have use cases which require
> adding LSM-level access controls and observability to user namespace
> creation. This is the problem we are trying to solve here; if you do
> not like the approach proposed in this patchset please suggest another
> implementation that allows LSMs visibility into user namespace
> creation.

Regarding the observability - can someone concisely lay out why just
auditing userns creation would not suffice? Userspace could decide
what to report based on whether the creating user_ns == /proc/1/ns/user...

Regarding limiting the tweaking of otherwise-privileged code by
unprivileged users, i wonder whether we could instead add smarts to
ns_capable(). Point being, uid mapping would still work, but we'd
break the "privileged against resources you own" part of user
namespaces. I would want it to default to allow, but then when a
0-day is found which requires reaching ns_capable() code, admins
could easily prevent exploitation until reboot from a fixed kernel.