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Message-ID: <1283887474.13260.48.camel@apollo>
Date: Tue, 07 Sep 2010 15:24:34 -0400
From: Jon Oberheide <jon@...rheide.org>
To: oss-security@...ts.openwall.com
Cc: Sebastian Krahmer <krahmer@...e.de>, security@...nel.org,  spender@...ecurity.net, Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>
Subject: Re: Re: [Security] /proc infoleaks

On Tue, 2010-09-07 at 03:51 -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> On Tue, 7 Sep 2010 10:35:46 +0200 Sebastian Krahmer <krahmer@...e.de> wrote:
> 
> > I have been elected to receive the bashing from all sides,
> > so here we go.
> > It is not about a new vulnerability or even a new discussion
> > but needs to be discussed, at least that we have a clear
> > statement about the status quo.
> > 
> > Recent i-CAN-haz-MODHARDEN.c has shown once *again* that
> > certain file permissions make no sense except to exploitation
> > development. There is no reason to have files like
> > 
> > /proc/kallsyms
> > /proc/slabinfo
> > /proc/zoneinfo
> > 
> > and probably a lot of others world readable. The symbol
> > addresses might be hard-coded for a certain targetlist
> > inside the exploit so you can argue that there
> > wont be any protection benefit from making it unreadable.
> > However this argument aint a reason to also leak it for self-compiled
> > kernels and doesnt even hold for dynamic/runtime content
> > like slabinfos etc.
> > It would be nice to have something like
> > 
> > echo 1 > /proc/quiet
> > 
> > or something like a umask for kernel-owned proc
> > entries so that you have a polite default and are
> > still able to enable it for certain profiling tools
> > or whereever you need it.
> 
> chmod 0440 /proc/slabinfo
> 
> What am I missing here?

You're missing the "secure by default" part.

(Obviously hiding slabinfo doesn't prevent exploitation of the vuln, but
not exposing it by default is a positive step.)

Regards,
Jon Oberheide

-- 
Jon Oberheide <jon@...rheide.org>
GnuPG Key: 1024D/F47C17FE
Fingerprint: B716 DA66 8173 6EDD 28F6  F184 5842 1C89 F47C 17FE

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