Re: [PATCH 1/3] binfmt: Move install_exec_creds after setup_new_exec to match binfmt_elf

Eric W. Biederman
2020-04-08T19:54:05Z

Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> writes:

> On Mon, Apr 6, 2020 at 6:34 PM Eric W. Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com> wrote:
>>
>> In 2016 Linus moved install_exec_creds immediately after
>> setup_new_exec, in binfmt_elf as a cleanup and as part of closing a
>> potential information leak.
>>
>> Perform the same cleanup for the other binary formats
>
> Can we not move it _into_ setup_new_exec() now if you've changed all
> the binfmt handlers?
>
> The fewer cases of "this gets called by the low-level handler at
> different points" that we have, the better off we'd be, I think. One
> of the complexities of our execve() code is that some of it gets
> called directly, and some of it gets called by the binfmt handler, and
> it's often very hard to see the logic when it jumps out to the binfmt
> code and then back to the generic fs/exec.c code..

Yes. I already have merging of setup_new_exec and install_exec_creds in
my working tree. I just posted the simplest set of patches to get the
idea across.

We can almost merge those two with flush_old_exec as well except for the
code that sets the personality between flush_old_exec and and
setup_new_exec. I am wondering if maybe setting the personality should
be a callback.

Eric