Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 2/4] Add access control support to qemu-bridge-helper

["Daniel P. Berrange" <berrange@redhat.com>]

On Tue, Nov 03, 2009 at 06:28:03PM -0600, Anthony Liguori wrote:
> We go to great lengths to restrict ourselves to just cap_net_admin as an OS
> enforced security mechanism.  However, we further restrict what we allow users
> to do to simply adding a tap device to a bridge interface by virtue of the fact
> that this is the only functionality we expose.
> 
> This is not good enough though.  An administrator is likely to want to restrict
> the bridges that an unprivileged user can access, in particular, to restrict
> an unprivileged user from putting a guest on what should be isolated networks.
> 
> This patch implements a ACL mechanism that is enforced by qemu-bridge-helper.
> The ACLs are fairly simple whitelist/blacklist mechanisms with a wildcard of
> 'all'.
> 
> An interesting feature of this ACL mechanism is that you can include external
> ACL files.  The main reason to support this is so that you can set different
> file system permissions on those external ACL files.  This allows an
> administrator to implement rather sophisicated ACL policies based on user/group
> policies via the file system.
> 
> If we fail to include an acl file, we are silent about it making this mechanism
> work pretty seamlessly.  As an example:
> 
> /etc/qemu/bridge.conf root:qemu 0640
> 
>  deny all
>  allow br0
>  include /etc/qemu/alice.conf
>  include /etc/qemu/bob.conf
> 
> /etc/qemu/alice.conf root:alice 0640
>  allow br1
> 
> /etc/qemu/bob.conf root:bob 0640
>  allow br2
> 
> This ACL pattern allows any user in the qemu group to get a tap device
> connected to br0 (which is bridged to the physical network).
> 
> Users in the alice group can additionally get a tap device connected to br1.
> This allows br1 to act as a private bridge for the alice group.
> 
> Users in the bob group can additionally get a tap device connected to br2.
> This allows br2 to act as a private bridge for the bob group.
> 
> Under no circumstance can the bob group get access to br1 or can the alice
> group get access to br2.

If we're going to define an ACL file for this, then I'd like us to
try and get a file format that is suitable for all possible ACL
needs in QEMU. In particular to allow coverage of VNC server ACLs
which I previously did a proof of concept for

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.emulators.qemu/38173

Daniel
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