linux-kernel - Re: [patch 0/8] unprivileged mount syscall

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Message-ID: <m1d524l43w.fsf@ebiederm.dsl.xmission.com>
Date:	Mon, 16 Apr 2007 09:40:35 -0600
From:	ebiederm@...ssion.com (Eric W. Biederman)
To:	Miklos Szeredi <miklos@...redi.hu>
Cc:	linuxram@...ibm.com, containers@...ts.osdl.org,
	linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org, akpm@...ux-foundation.org,
	util-linux-ng@...r.kernel.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [patch 0/8] unprivileged mount syscall

Miklos Szeredi <miklos@...redi.hu> writes:

>> Arn't there ways to escape chroot jails? Serge had pointed me to a URL
>> which showed chroots can be escaped. And if that is true than having all
>> user's private mount tree in the same namespace can be a security issue?
>
> No.  In fact chrooting the user into /share/$USER will actually
> _grant_ a privilege to the user, instead of taking it away.  It allows
> the user to modify it's root namespace, which it wouldn't be able to
> in the initial namespace.
>
> So even if the user could escape from the chroot (which I doubt), s/he
> would not be able to do any harm, since unprivileged mounting would be
> restricted to /share.  Also /share/$USER should only have read/search
> permission for $USER or no permissions at all, which would mean, that
> other users' namespaces would be safe from tampering as well.

A couple of points.
- chroot can be escaped, it is just a chdir for the root directory it
  is not a security feature.  The only security is that you have to be root to call chdir.
  A carefully done namespace setup won't have that issue.

- While it may not violate security as far as what a user is allowed to modify it may
  violate security as far as what a user is allowed to see.

There are interesting per login cases as well such as allowing a user to replicate
their mount tree from another machine when they log in.  When /home is on a network
filesystem this can be very practical and can allow propagation of mounts across
machines not just across a single login session.

Eric




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