Re: [PATCH] cred: Do not default to init_cred in prepare_kernel_cred()

[Paulo Alcantara <pc@cjr.nz>]

Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org> writes:

> A common exploit pattern for ROP attacks is to abuse prepare_kernel_cred()
> in order to construct escalated privileges[1]. Instead of providing a
> short-hand argument (NULL) to the "daemon" argument to indicate using
> init_cred as the base cred, require that "daemon" is always set to
> an actual task. Replace all existing callers that were passing NULL
> with &init_task.
>
> Future attacks will need to have sufficiently powerful read/write
> primitives to have found an appropriately privileged task and written it
> to the ROP stack as an argument to succeed, which is similarly difficult
> to the prior effort needed to escalate privileges before struct cred
> existed: locate the current cred and overwrite the uid member.
>
> This has the added benefit of meaning that prepare_kernel_cred() can no
> longer exceed the privileges of the init task, which may have changed from
> the original init_cred (e.g. dropping capabilities from the bounding set).
>
> [1] https://google.com/search?q=commit_creds(prepare_kernel_cred(0))
>
> Cc: "Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@xmission.com>
> Cc: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
> Cc: Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@kernel.org>
> Cc: Russ Weight <russell.h.weight@intel.com>
> Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
> Cc: "Rafael J. Wysocki" <rafael@kernel.org>
> Cc: Steve French <sfrench@samba.org>
> Cc: Paulo Alcantara <pc@cjr.nz>
> Cc: Ronnie Sahlberg <lsahlber@redhat.com>
> Cc: Shyam Prasad N <sprasad@microsoft.com>
> Cc: Tom Talpey <tom@talpey.com>
> Cc: Namjae Jeon <linkinjeon@kernel.org>
> Cc: Sergey Senozhatsky <senozhatsky@chromium.org>
> Cc: Trond Myklebust <trond.myklebust@hammerspace.com>
> Cc: Anna Schumaker <anna@kernel.org>
> Cc: Chuck Lever <chuck.lever@oracle.com>
> Cc: Jeff Layton <jlayton@kernel.org>
> Cc: "David S. Miller" <davem@davemloft.net>
> Cc: Eric Dumazet <edumazet@google.com>
> Cc: Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>
> Cc: Paolo Abeni <pabeni@redhat.com>
> Cc: "Michal Koutný" <mkoutny@suse.com>
> Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
> Cc: linux-cifs@vger.kernel.org
> Cc: samba-technical@lists.samba.org
> Cc: linux-nfs@vger.kernel.org
> Cc: netdev@vger.kernel.org
> Signed-off-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
> ---
>  drivers/base/firmware_loader/main.c    |  2 +-
>  fs/cifs/cifs_spnego.c                  |  2 +-
>  fs/cifs/cifsacl.c                      |  2 +-
>  fs/ksmbd/smb_common.c                  |  2 +-
>  fs/nfs/flexfilelayout/flexfilelayout.c |  4 ++--
>  fs/nfs/nfs4idmap.c                     |  2 +-
>  fs/nfsd/nfs4callback.c                 |  2 +-
>  kernel/cred.c                          | 15 +++++++--------
>  net/dns_resolver/dns_key.c             |  2 +-
>  9 files changed, 16 insertions(+), 17 deletions(-)

Acked-by: Paulo Alcantara (SUSE) <pc@cjr.nz>