Re: [RFC PATCH v1 00/11] Landlock: Namespace and capability control

Mickaël Salaün
2026-04-21T08:24:20Z

On Mon, Apr 20, 2026 at 05:06:32PM +0200, Günther Noack wrote:
> Hello!
>
> On Thu, Mar 12, 2026 at 11:04:33AM +0100, Mickaël Salaün wrote:
> > Namespaces are a fundamental building block for containers and
> > application sandboxes, but user namespace creation significantly widens
> > the kernel attack surface. CVE-2022-0185 (filesystem mount parsing),
> > CVE-2022-25636 and CVE-2023-32233 (netfilter), and CVE-2022-0492 (cgroup
> > v1 release_agent) all demonstrate vulnerabilities exploitable only
> > through capabilities gained via user namespaces. Some distributions
> > block user namespace creation entirely, but this removes a useful
> > isolation primitive. Fine-grained control allows trusted programs to
> > use namespaces while preventing unnecessary exposure for programs that
> > do not need them.
> >
> > Existing mechanisms (user.max_*_namespaces sysctls, userns_create LSM
> > hook, PR_SET_NO_NEW_PRIVS, and capset) each address part of this threat
> > but none provides per-process, fine-grained control over both namespace
> > types and capabilities. Container runtimes resort to seccomp-based
> > clone/unshare filtering, but seccomp cannot dereference clone3's flag
> > structure, forcing runtimes to block clone3 entirely.
> >
> > Landlock's composable layer model enables several patterns: a user
> > session manager can restrict namespace types and capabilities broadly
> > while allowing trusted programs to create the namespaces they need, and
> > each deeper layer can further restrict the allowed set. Container
> > runtimes can similarly deny namespace creation inside managed
> > containers.
>
> I assume we are talking about an unrestricted systemd user session
> manager, which would not itself be restricted? (If the entire user
> session were running under Landlock, users couldn't change their
> passwords with "passwd" any more, because of the no_new_privs
> requirement.)

systemd can be use to create such session, as other init systems.
If no_new_privs is set, commands such as passwd would indeed not work,
but:
1. The process applying the Landlock restrictions (e.g. creating the
user session) doesn't need to set no_new_privs if it has
CAP_SYS_ADMIN in the current user namespace.
2. SUID programs can (and should probably) be replaced with proper
client/server interfaces (i.e. for the client to not be privileged),
see DBus services (e.g. Account) or homectl for instance.

>
>
> > This series adds two new permission categories to Landlock:
> >
> > - LANDLOCK_PERM_NAMESPACE_ENTER: Restricts which namespace types a
> > sandboxed process can acquire: both creation (unshare/clone) and entry
> > (setns). User namespace creation has no capability check in the
> > kernel, so this is the only enforcement mechanism for that entry
> > point.
> >
> > - LANDLOCK_PERM_CAPABILITY_USE: Restricts which Linux capabilities a
> > sandboxed process can use, regardless of how they were obtained
> > (including through user namespace creation).
>
> Given that you already went through multiple iterations here, I fully

It's the first public one, but it's well advanced.

> expect that I am overlooking something here, but based on the
> explanation, it's not clear to me why the capability control is needed
> in addition to the namespace control, to reduce the kernel attack
> surface.
>
> In my understanding the "attack surface" problem with user namespaces
> is that they allow unprivileged processes to gain CAP_SYS_ADMIN within
> that namespace, which unlocks access to code paths which were
> traditionally reserved for the (top level) root user.

This capability and others.

>
> But then, to prevent that from happening, it seems that restricting
> access to user namespace creation would be sufficient?

It would be sufficient to limit the kernel attack surface, but it would
make all the related features unusable. As explained in this cover
letter, there are already several ways to block everything, but this
doesn't help for a lot of use cases and this Landlock feature proposes a
new fine-grained and unprivileged way to properly restrict some
capabilities.

>
> (Also, in some cases, I suspect it might be possible to break
> assumptions that more privileged processes make about filesystem
> layout if the user can change the mount layout. But that is not an
> issue with Landlock, as we forbid changes to mounts and also require
> no_new_privs.)
>
>
> > Both use new handled_perm and LANDLOCK_RULE_* constants following the
> > existing allow-list model. The UAPI uses raw CAP_* and CLONE_NEW*
> > values directly; unknown values are silently accepted for forward
> > compatibility (the allow-list denies them by default). The Landlock ABI
> > version is bumped from 8 to 9.
>
> Compatibility question:
>
> For both permission categories, when they are "handled" in the
> ruleset, they default to denying *all* types of namespaces, and *all*
> types of capabilities.
>
> This is different to the handled_access_* rights, where we are
> requiring users to explicitly list all restricted rights as "handled",
> because the full list of available operations might be a moving
> target.
>
> Why is this not a problem for capabilities and for namespaces? Both
> the list of capabilities and the list of namespaces has been expanded
> in the past. What happens if a new capability or namespace is
> invented? If these are evolved, is that backwards compatible for the
> existing users of these Landlock permission categories?

This question is answered is the documentation (and the commit
messages), and that's the main difference between handled_access_* and
handled_perm. In a nutshell, the permission rules uses non-Landlock
bits that naturally evolve without any Landlock-specific changes.

>
>
> > The handled_perm infrastructure is designed to be reusable by future
> > permission categories. The last patch documents the design rationale
> > for the permission model and the criteria for choosing between
> > handled_access_*, handled_perm, and scoped. A patch series to add
> > socket creation control is under review [2]; it could benefit from the
> > same permission model to achieve complete deny-by-default coverage of
> > socket creation.

See here ^

> >
> > This series builds on Christian Brauner's namespace LSM blob RFC [1],
> > included as patch 1.
> >
> > Christian, could you please review patch 3? It adds a FOR_EACH_NS_TYPE
> > X-macro to ns_common_types.h and derives CLONE_NS_ALL, replacing inline
> > CLONE_NEW* flag enumerations in nsproxy.c and fork.c.
> >
> > Paul, could you please review patch 2? It adds LSM_AUDIT_DATA_NS, a new
> > audit record type that logs namespace_type and inum for
> > namespace-related LSM denials.
> >
> > All four example vulnerabilities follow the same pattern: an
> > unprivileged user creates a user namespace to obtain capabilities, then
> > creates a second namespace to exercise them against vulnerable code.
> > LANDLOCK_PERM_NAMESPACE_ENTER prevents this by denying the user
> > namespace (eliminating the capability grant) or the specific namespace
> > type needed to exercise it. LANDLOCK_PERM_CAPABILITY_USE independently
> > prevents it by denying the required capability.
>
> Here, it is also not clear to me why LANDLOCK_PERM_CAPABILITY_USE is
> needed in addition to LANDLOCK_PERM_NAMESPACE_ENTER.

This is also explained in the documentation.

>
> Looking at capabilities(7), my understanding is that capabilities can
> only be acquired through:
>
> (1) user namespaces (prevented with LANDLOCK_PERM_NAMESPACE_ENTER)
> (2) execve (setuid or individual capabilities, prevented using
> PR_SET_NO_NEW_PRIVS)
>
> ...so if a process were to start out with no such capabilities,
> wouldn't that be enough to prevent it from gaining more? Am I
> overlooking another way through which these can be acquired?
>
> The Landlock capability support adds a "filter" for the use of
> capabilities, but my understanding of the capability system was that
> it already *is* that filter. As long as we prevent the acquisition of
> new capabilities, shouldn't that be sufficient?

In a nutshell, capabilities applies to namespaces (and their type), so
it makes sense to be able to control them together, see the chroot
example. Please take a look at the documentation.

>
>
> > Namespace restriction is enforced at two hook sites: namespace_alloc
> > (unshare/clone) and namespace_install (setns). Together, these ensure a
> > process denied a namespace type cannot circumvent the restriction by
> > entering a pre-existing namespace via setns() on an inherited or passed
> > file descriptor. When a domain handles both permissions, both must
> > independently allow the operation (e.g., unshare(CLONE_NEWNET) requires
> > both CAP_SYS_ADMIN to be allowed and CLONE_NEWNET to be allowed).
> >
> > Design evolution:
> >
> > The first approach added CAP_OPT flags to security_capable() to
> > distinguish namespace creation contexts. This was too invasive and
> > would have required capability splitting (a dedicated CAP_NAMESPACE)
> > which does not help because the CAP_SYS_ADMIN fallback for backward
> > compatibility undermines the distinction.
> >
> > The second stored the namespace creator's domain in the LSM blob and
> > used domain ancestry comparison in hook_capable() to bypass capability
> > checks for namespace management operations. A SCOPE_NAMESPACE flag
> > restricted setns() by the namespace creator's domain, like SCOPE_SIGNAL.
> > Both were dropped: scopes should only concern Landlock properties
> > (domain relationships), not kernel namespace state; and the
> > cross-namespace heuristic (ns != cred->user_ns) did not accurately
> > identify namespace management operations.
> >
> > The final design drops all of this. The key insight is that
> > capabilities gained through user namespace creation are only exercisable
> > against namespaces of a specific type: creating a network namespace is
> > what makes CAP_NET_ADMIN exercisable. LANDLOCK_PERM_NAMESPACE_ENTER
> > controls where capabilities are exercisable by restricting which
> > namespace types can be acquired. LANDLOCK_PERM_CAPABILITY_USE controls
> > which capabilities are available, as a pure per-layer bitmask check with
> > no namespace awareness. The two are independently enforced at their own
> > hook sites, with no interaction in hook_capable(). No scope flag is
> > added in this series.
> >
> > Note that when Landlock filesystem restrictions are in use, mount
> > namespace creation has an inherent limitation: all mount topology
> > changes are denied when any filesystem right is handled, which is
> > optional. A dedicated mount access control type is left for future work
> > [3].
> >
> > https://lore.kernel.org/r/20260216-work-security-namespace-v1-1-075c28758e1f@kernel.org [1]
> > https://lore.kernel.org/r/20251118134639.3314803-1-ivanov.mikhail1@huawei-partners.com [2]
> > https://github.com/landlock-lsm/linux/issues/14 [3]
> >
> > Christian Brauner (1):
> > security: add LSM blob and hooks for namespaces
> >
> > Mickaël Salaün (10):
> > security: Add LSM_AUDIT_DATA_NS for namespace audit records
> > nsproxy: Add FOR_EACH_NS_TYPE() X-macro and CLONE_NS_ALL
> > landlock: Wrap per-layer access masks in struct layer_rights
> > landlock: Enforce namespace entry restrictions
> > landlock: Enforce capability restrictions
> > selftests/landlock: Drain stale audit records on init
> > selftests/landlock: Add namespace restriction tests
> > selftests/landlock: Add capability restriction tests
> > samples/landlock: Add capability and namespace restriction support
> > landlock: Add documentation for capability and namespace restrictions
> >
> > Documentation/admin-guide/LSM/landlock.rst | 19 +-
> > Documentation/security/landlock.rst | 80 +-
> > Documentation/userspace-api/landlock.rst | 156 +-
> > include/linux/lsm_audit.h | 5 +
> > include/linux/lsm_hook_defs.h | 3 +
> > include/linux/lsm_hooks.h | 1 +
> > include/linux/ns/ns_common_types.h | 47 +-
> > include/linux/security.h | 20 +
> > include/uapi/linux/landlock.h | 89 +-
> > kernel/fork.c | 7 +-
> > kernel/nscommon.c | 12 +
> > kernel/nsproxy.c | 21 +-
> > samples/landlock/sandboxer.c | 164 +-
> > security/landlock/Makefile | 2 +
> > security/landlock/access.h | 72 +-
> > security/landlock/audit.c | 8 +
> > security/landlock/audit.h | 2 +
> > security/landlock/cap.c | 142 ++
> > security/landlock/cap.h | 49 +
> > security/landlock/cred.h | 47 +-
> > security/landlock/limits.h | 9 +
> > security/landlock/ns.c | 188 +++
> > security/landlock/ns.h | 74 +
> > security/landlock/ruleset.c | 23 +-
> > security/landlock/ruleset.h | 53 +-
> > security/landlock/setup.c | 4 +
> > security/landlock/syscalls.c | 124 +-
> > security/lsm_audit.c | 4 +
> > security/lsm_init.c | 2 +
> > security/security.c | 76 +
> > tools/testing/selftests/landlock/audit.h | 29 +-
> > tools/testing/selftests/landlock/audit_test.c | 2 -
> > tools/testing/selftests/landlock/base_test.c | 20 +-
> > tools/testing/selftests/landlock/cap_test.c | 614 ++++++++
> > tools/testing/selftests/landlock/common.h | 23 +
> > tools/testing/selftests/landlock/config | 5 +
> > tools/testing/selftests/landlock/ns_test.c | 1379 +++++++++++++++++
> > tools/testing/selftests/landlock/wrappers.h | 6 +
> > 38 files changed, 3487 insertions(+), 94 deletions(-)
> > create mode 100644 security/landlock/cap.c
> > create mode 100644 security/landlock/cap.h
> > create mode 100644 security/landlock/ns.c
> > create mode 100644 security/landlock/ns.h
> > create mode 100644 tools/testing/selftests/landlock/cap_test.c
> > create mode 100644 tools/testing/selftests/landlock/ns_test.c
> >
> >
> > base-commit: 5dfb8077be2bbe2c3b9477da759e80fa9f98da42
> > --
> > 2.53.0
> >
>
> FWIW, I have also skimmed through some of the code and documentation
> and the code seemed very clean so far.
>
> –Günther
>