Re: [PATCH v2] fs: block cross-uid sticky symlinks

Kees Cook
2010-06-01T14:53:57Z

On Tue, Jun 01, 2010 at 07:55:02AM -0400, Eric Paris wrote:
> On Tue, 2010-06-01 at 03:55 -0400, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> > On Mon, May 31, 2010 at 08:24:23PM -0700, Kees Cook wrote:
>
> > > My rationale is that if it's in commoncaps, it's effective for everyone, so
> > > it might as well be in core VFS. If the VFS objections really do boil down
> > > to "not in fs/" then I'm curious if doing this in commoncaps is acceptable.
> >
> > If you think the objection is about having things in fs/ you're smoking
> > some really bad stuff.
>
> Sounds to me like we should probably follow the same path as
> mmap_min_addr. We should add these hooks right in the VFS where they
> belong (much like mmap_min_addr hooks into the vm) and control them 2
> ways.
>
> 1) a Kconfig so distros can choose to turn it on or off by default
> 2) a /proc interface so root can turn it off
>
> Nothing about that precludes additional similar checks inside an LSM
> (like CONFIG_LSM_MMAP_MIN_ADDR) which can be more finely controlled. So
> maybe we want to follow up with the core VFS check with new checks in
> SELinux (and maybe apparmour). This allows the user to disable the
> general check and still be provided with some modicum of protection.
> You might ask why not ONLY do the check in SELinux and drop the generic
> check, but we have seen with mmap_min_addr that the SELinux unconfined
> user can do damn well anything it wants to, so having a non-LSM version
> of appropriate security checks is highly regarded.

Would a CONFIG for this be overkill? mmap_min_addr is a little different
in that there was desire to control a bottom limit on it, etc. Given this
is either "on" or "off", I think just a sysctl is needed?

I will send a v3 patch that fixes the sysctl name and default, so that it
is up to the distro and end user how to configure their symlink semantics.

-Kees

--
Kees Cook
Ubuntu Security Team