linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] keyrings: Allow searching the user session keyring

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Date:	Tue, 14 Jun 2016 10:46:41 +0100
From:	David Howells <dhowells@...hat.com>
To:	Gwendal Grignou <gwendal@...omium.org>
Cc:	dhowells@...hat.com, james.l.morris@...cle.com, serge@...lyn.com,
	keyrings@...r.kernel.org,
	Linux Kernel <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	linux-security-module@...r.kernel.org,
	"Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@....edu>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] keyrings: Allow searching the user session keyring

Gwendal Grignou <gwendal@...omium.org> wrote:

> Currently, if a session keyring exists, we are not searching in the
> user session or user keyrings.

That is correct.  New session keyrings are given a link to the user session if
created by pam_keyinit.  If you don't want to search the user keyring, you can
just unlink it from your session keyring.

The user-session keyring is a fallback keyring in case there's no session
keyring.  It seemed to make things easier at the time, but it shouldn't really
exist and I would deprecate it and remove it if I could - especially now that
persistent keyrings exist.  The uid 0 user-session keyring is a potential
security hole because it allows implicit sharing of authentication data
between daemon processes.

David