Date:   Wed, 17 Jan 2018 19:56:59 +0100
From:   Alban Crequy <alban@...volk.io>
To:     Seth Forshee <seth.forshee@...onical.com>
Cc:     Dongsu Park <dongsu@...volk.io>, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        containers@...ts.linux-foundation.org,
        "Eric W . Biederman" <ebiederm@...ssion.com>,
        Miklos Szeredi <mszeredi@...hat.com>,
        Sargun Dhillon <sargun@...gun.me>,
        linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org, Tejun Heo <tj@...nel.org>,
        David Herrmann <dh.herrmann@...glemail.com>,
        Tom Gundersen <teg@...m.no>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 08/11] fuse: Support fuse filesystems outside of init_user_ns

On Wed, Jan 17, 2018 at 3:29 PM, Seth Forshee
<seth.forshee@...onical.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 17, 2018 at 11:59:06AM +0100, Alban Crequy wrote:
>> [Adding Tejun, David, Tom for question about cuse]
>>
>> On Fri, Dec 22, 2017 at 3:32 PM, Dongsu Park <dongsu@...volk.io> wrote:
>> > From: Seth Forshee <seth.forshee@...onical.com>
>> >
>> > In order to support mounts from namespaces other than
>> > init_user_ns, fuse must translate uids and gids to/from the
>> > userns of the process servicing requests on /dev/fuse. This
>> > patch does that, with a couple of restrictions on the namespace:
>> >
>> >  - The userns for the fuse connection is fixed to the namespace
>> >    from which /dev/fuse is opened.
>> >
>> >  - The namespace must be the same as s_user_ns.
>> >
>> > These restrictions simplify the implementation by avoiding the
>> > need to pass around userns references and by allowing fuse to
>> > rely on the checks in inode_change_ok for ownership changes.
>> > Either restriction could be relaxed in the future if needed.
>> >
>> > For cuse the namespace used for the connection is also simply
>> > current_user_ns() at the time /dev/cuse is opened.
>>
>> Was a use case discussed for using cuse in a new unprivileged userns?
>>
>> I ran some tests yesterday with cusexmp [1] and I could add a new char
>> device as an unprivileged user with:
>>
>> $ unshare -U -r -m sh -c 'mount --bind /mnt/cuse /dev/cuse ; cusexmp
>> --maj=99 --min=30 --name=foo
>>
>> where /mnt/cuse is previously mknod'ed correctly and chmod'ed 777.
>> Then, I could see the new device:
>>
>> $ cat /proc/devices | grep foo
>>  99 foo
>>
>> On normal distros, we don't have a /mnt/cuse chmod'ed 777 but still it
>> seems dangerous if the dev node can be provided otherwise and if we
>> don't have a use case for it.
>>
>> Thoughts?
>
> I can't remember the specific reasons, but I had concluded that letting
> unprivileged users use cuse within a user namespace isn't safe. But
> having a cuse device node usable by regular users at all is equally
> unsafe I suspect,

This makes sense.

> so I don't think your example demonstrates any problem
> specific to user namespaces. There shouldn't be any way to use a user
> namespace to gain access permissions towards /dev/cuse, otherwise we
> have bigger problems than cuse to worry about.

>From my tests, the patch seem safe but I don't fully understand why that is.

I am not trying to gain more permissions towards /dev/cuse but to
create another cuse char file from within the unprivileged userns. I
tested the scenario by patching the memfs userspace FUSE driver to
generate the char device whenever the file is named "cuse" (turning
the regular file into a char device with the cuse major/minor behind
the scene):

$ unshare -U -r -m
# memfs /mnt/memfs &
# ls -l /mnt/memfs
# echo -n > /mnt/memfs/cuse
-bash: /mnt/memfs/cuse: Input/output error
# ls -l /mnt/memfs/cuse
crwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 10, 203 Jan 17 18:24 /mnt/memfs/cuse
# cat /mnt/memfs/cuse
cat: /mnt/memfs/cuse: Permission denied

But then, I could not use that char device, even though it seems to
have the correct major/minor and permissions. The kernel FUSE code
seems to call init_special_inode() to handle character devices. I
don't understand why it seems to be safe.

Thanks!
Alban

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