linux-kernel - Re: [Regression?] 1ea0ce4069 ("selinux: allow changing labels for cgroupfs") stops Android from booting

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Date:   Mon, 27 Feb 2017 19:18:34 -0500
From:   Paul Moore <paul@...l-moore.com>
To:     Stephen Smalley <sds@...ho.nsa.gov>
Cc:     Nick Kralevich <nnk@...gle.com>,
        John Stultz <john.stultz@...aro.org>,
        Jeffrey Vander Stoep <jeffv@...gle.com>,
        Antonio Murdaca <amurdaca@...hat.com>,
        lkml <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        Android Kernel Team <kernel-team@...roid.com>
Subject: Re: [Regression?] 1ea0ce4069 ("selinux: allow changing labels for
 cgroupfs") stops Android from booting

On Mon, Feb 27, 2017 at 4:23 PM, Stephen Smalley <sds@...ho.nsa.gov> wrote:
> On Mon, 2017-02-27 at 12:48 -0800, Nick Kralevich wrote:
>> On Mon, Feb 27, 2017 at 11:53 AM, Stephen Smalley <sds@...ho.nsa.gov>
>> wrote:
>> >
>> > >
>> > > I can reproduce it on angler (with a back-port of just that
>> > > patch),
>> > > although I am unclear on the cause.  The patch is only supposed
>> > > to
>> > > enable explicit setting of security labels by userspace on cgroup
>> > > files, so it isn't supposed to cause any breakage under existing
>> > > policy.  Prior to the patch, the kernel would always just return
>> > > -1
>> > > with errno EOPNOTSUPP upon attempts to set security labels on
>> > > cgroup
>> > > files; with the patch, the kernel may instead return -1 with
>> > > errno
>> > > EACCES if not allowed.  So I suppose if userspace was explicitly
>> > > testing for EOPNOTSUPP and not failing hard in that case, it
>> > > might
>> > > cause breakage.  Not sure why existing userspace would be trying
>> > > to
>> > > relabel cgroup files, unless it is just a recursive restorecon
>> > > that
>> > > happens to traverse into a cgroup mount (and in that case, not
>> > > sure
>> > > why
>> > > it would be fatal).  Other possible interaction would be use of
>> > > setfscreatecon() prior to creating a file in cgroup.
>> >
>> > Oh, I see - it is the latter.
>> >
>> > For example, init.rc does mkdir /dev/cpuctl/bg_non_interactive,
>> > which
>> > internally looks up the context for that directory from
>> > file_contexts
>> > and does a setfscreatecon() followed by a mkdir().  Previously,
>> > that
>> > was ignored because cgroup did not support anything other than the
>> > policy-defined label.  But now it will try to use that label, which
>> > in
>> > turn will trigger a denial in enforcing mode and the create will
>> > fail.
>> >
>> > So this is an incompatible change and needs to be reverted.
>> > We'll need to wrap it up with a policy capability or something to
>> > allow
>> > it to be enabled only if the policy correctly supports it.  Even
>> > better, we should instead just allow the policy to specify which
>> > filesystems should support this behavior (already on the issues
>> > list).
>> >
>>
>> If Android is the only system affected by this bug, I would prefer to
>> just fix Android to allow for this patch, rather than having
>> additional kernel complexity.
>
> Well, it does break userspace (even if it happens to only affect
> Android, which isn't clear, e.g. possibly a distribution would likewise
> suffer breakage under a tighter policy), and we already have a long-
> standing open issue to replace the current set of whitelisted
> filesystem types with something configuration-driven.  So I'm ok with
> reverting it and requiring it to be done in a more general way.  The
> latter is something we want regardless.

This went up to Linus during the current merge window via the
stable-4.11 branch and I know the container guys really want this so
I'd prefer to fix this up in 4.11 with a policy capability if possible
(and I believe it should be).  I agree with Stephen that we need a
better long term solution, but I think a policy capability should work
in the short term.

Who wants to send me a patch? ;)

-- 
paul moore
www.paul-moore.com