lists.openwall.net   lists  /  announce  owl-users  owl-dev  john-users  john-dev  passwdqc-users  yescrypt  popa3d-users  /  oss-security  kernel-hardening  musl  sabotage  tlsify  passwords  /  crypt-dev  xvendor  /  Bugtraq  Full-Disclosure  linux-kernel  linux-netdev  linux-ext4  linux-hardening  linux-cve-announce  PHC 
Open Source and information security mailing list archives
 
Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.
[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]
Message-ID: <CAEVpBa+JpidwFTxvJj1U1n3y+gRb+5+YJ1bUTEC3d2Wp=34Wow@mail.gmail.com>
Date:	Fri, 24 Apr 2015 17:46:25 +0100
From:	Mark Williamson <mwilliamson@...o-software.com>
To:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
Cc:	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	"Kirill A. Shutemov" <kirill.shutemov@...ux.intel.com>,
	Pavel Emelyanov <xemul@...allels.com>,
	Konstantin Khlebnikov <khlebnikov@...nvz.org>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Mark Seaborn <mseaborn@...omium.org>,
	Andy Lutomirski <luto@...capital.net>,
	Linux API <linux-api@...r.kernel.org>,
	Finn Grimwood <fgrimwood@...o-software.com>,
	Daniel James <djames@...o-software.com>
Subject: Re: Regression: Requiring CAP_SYS_ADMIN for /proc/<pid>/pagemap
 causes application-level breakage

Hi Linus,

Thanks for responding so quickly!

On Fri, Apr 24, 2015 at 5:08 PM, Linus Torvalds
<torvalds@...ux-foundation.org> wrote:
> So the one exception to the regression rule is "security fixes", but
> even for security fixes we do try to be as reasonable as humanly
> possible to make them not break things.

Understood - there are clear reasons something had to be done here.

> Now, as you mentioned, one option is to not outright disallow accesses
> to the /proc/PID/pagemap, but to at least hide the page frame numbers.
> However, I don't believe that we have a good enough scrambling model
> to make that reasonable. Remember: any attacker will be able to see
> our scrambling code, so it would need to be both cryptographically
> secure *and* use a truly random per-VM secret key. Quite frankly,
> that's a _lot_ of effort for dubious gain...

*nod*

> So the "just show physical addresses as zero for non-root users"
> (instead of the outright ban on opening the file) is likely the only
> really viable alternative.
>
> It sounds like that could work for you. So if you can modify the app
> to do that, and send me a tested kernel patch that moves the
> permission check into the read phase (remember to use the open-time
> credentials in "file->f_cred" rather than the read-time credentials in
> "current" - otherwise you can trick some suid program to read the fily
> that an unauthorized user opened), then we can have this fixed. Does
> that sound reasonable?

That sounds very reasonable, thank you!  We'll cook up a patch and get
back to you.

Thanks,
Mark
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@...r.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/

Powered by blists - more mailing lists

Powered by Openwall GNU/*/Linux Powered by OpenVZ