[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]
Message-ID: <20171108190223.vdkyepcaegmub6le@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2017 20:02:25 +0100
From: Christian Brauner <christian.brauner@...onical.com>
To: Mahesh Bandewar (महेश बंडेवार) <maheshb@...gle.com>
Cc: "Serge E. Hallyn" <serge@...lyn.com>,
Boris Lukashev <blukashev@...pervictus.com>,
Daniel Micay <danielmicay@...il.com>,
Mahesh Bandewar <mahesh@...dewar.net>,
LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
Netdev <netdev@...r.kernel.org>,
Kernel-hardening <kernel-hardening@...ts.openwall.com>,
Linux API <linux-api@...r.kernel.org>,
Kees Cook <keescook@...omium.org>,
"Eric W . Biederman" <ebiederm@...ssion.com>,
Eric Dumazet <edumazet@...gle.com>,
David Miller <davem@...emloft.net>
Subject: Re: Re: [PATCH resend 2/2] userns: control
capabilities of some user namespaces
On Wed, Nov 08, 2017 at 03:09:59AM -0800, Mahesh Bandewar (महेश बंडेवार) wrote:
> Sorry folks I was traveling and seems like lot happened on this thread. :p
>
> I will try to response few of these comments selectively -
>
> > The thing that makes me hesitate with this set is that it is a
> > permanent new feature to address what (I hope) is a temporary
> > problem.
> I agree this is permanent new feature but it's not solving a temporary
> problem. It's impossible to assess what and when new vulnerability
> that could show up. I think Daniel summed it up appropriately in his
> response
>
> > Seems like there are two naive ways to do it, the first being to just
> > look at all code under ns_capable() plus code called from there. It
> > seems like looking at the result of that could be fruitful.
> This is really hard. The main issue that there were features designed
> and developed before user-ns days with an assumption that unprivileged
> users will never get certain capabilities which only root user gets.
> Now that is not true anymore with user-ns creation with mapping root
> for any process. Also at the same time blocking user-ns creation for
> eveyone is a big-hammer which is not needed too. So it's not that easy
> to just perform a code-walk-though and correct those decisions now.
>
> > It seems to me that the existing control in
> > /proc/sys/kernel/unprivileged_userns_clone might be the better duct tape
> > in that case.
> This solution is essentially blocking unprivileged users from using
> the user-namespaces entirely. This is not really a solution that can
> work. The solution that this patch-set adds allows unprivileged users
> to create user-namespaces. Actually the proposed solution is more
> fine-grained approach than the unprivileged_userns_clone solution
> since you can selectively block capabilities rather than completely
> blocking the functionality.
I've been talking to Stéphane today about this and we should also keep in mind
that we have:
chb@...ventiont|~
> ls -al /proc/sys/user/
total 0
dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 0 Nov 6 23:32 .
dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 0 Nov 2 22:13 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Nov 8 19:48 max_cgroup_namespaces
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Nov 8 19:48 max_inotify_instances
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Nov 8 19:48 max_inotify_watches
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Nov 8 19:48 max_ipc_namespaces
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Nov 8 19:48 max_mnt_namespaces
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Nov 8 19:48 max_net_namespaces
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Nov 8 19:48 max_pid_namespaces
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Nov 8 19:48 max_user_namespaces
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Nov 8 19:48 max_uts_namespaces
These files allow you to limit the number of namespaces that can be created
*per namespace* type. So let's say your system runs a bunch of user namespaces
you can do:
chb@...ventiont|~
> echo 0 > /proc/sys/user/max_user_namespaces
So that the next time you try to create a user namespaces you'd see:
chb@...ventiont|~
> unshare -U
unshare: unshare failed: No space left on device
So there's not even a need to upstream a new sysctl since we have ways of
blocking this.
Also I'd like to point out that a lot of capability checks and actual security
vulnerabilities are associated with CAP_SYS_ADMIN. So what you likely want to do
is block CAP_SYS_ADMIN in user namespaces but at this point they become
basically useless for a lot of interesting use cases. In addition, this patch
would add another layer of complexity that is - imho - not really warranted
given what we already have. The relationship between capabilities and user
namespaces should stay as simply as possible so that it stays maintaineable.
User namespaces already introduce a proper layer of complexity.
Just my two cents. I might be totally off here of course.
Christian
Powered by blists - more mailing lists
Confused about mailing lists and their use?
Read about mailing lists on Wikipedia
and check out these
guidelines on proper formatting of your messages.
