linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v2] xattr: Enable security.capability in user namespaces

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Date:   Fri, 14 Jul 2017 18:53:16 -0500
From:   ebiederm@...ssion.com (Eric W. Biederman)
To:     James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@...senPartnership.com>
Cc:     Mimi Zohar <zohar@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>,
        "Serge E. Hallyn" <serge@...lyn.com>,
        Stefan Berger <stefanb@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>,
        Mimi Zohar <zohar@...ibm.com>,
        containers@...ts.linux-foundation.org,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-security-module@...r.kernel.org, casey@...aufler-ca.com,
        Theodore Ts'o <tytso@....edu>, lkp@...org
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2] xattr: Enable security.capability in user namespaces

James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@...senPartnership.com> writes:

> On Fri, 2017-07-14 at 16:03 -0400, Mimi Zohar wrote:
>> On Fri, 2017-07-14 at 11:52 -0700, James Bottomley wrote:
>> > 
>> > On Fri, 2017-07-14 at 14:48 -0400, Mimi Zohar wrote:
>> > > 
>> > > The concern is with a shared filesystems.  In that case, for IMA
>> > > it would make sense to support a native and a namespace xattr.
>> > >  If due to xattr space limitations we have to limit the number of
>> > > xattrs, then we should limit it to two - a native and a namespace
>> > > version, with a "uid=" tag - first namespace gets permission to
>> > > write the namespace xattr.  Again, like in the layered case, if
>> > > the namespace xattr doesn't exist, fall back to using the native
>> > > xattr.
>> > 
>> > Just on this point: if we're really concerned about the need on
>> > shared filesystems to have multiple IMA signatures per file, might
>> > it not make sense simply to support multiple signatures within the
>> > security.ima xattr? The rules for writing signature updates within
>> > user namespaces would be somewhat complex (say only able to replace
>> > a signature for which you demonstrate you possess the key) but it
>> > would lead to an implementation which would work for traditional
>> > shared filesystems (like NFS) as well as containerised bind mounts.
>> 
>> Writing security.ima requires being root with CAP_SYS_ADMIN
>> privileges.  I wouldn't want to give root within the namespace
>> permission to over write or just extend the native security.ima.
>
> but why?  That's partly the point of all of this: some security.
> attributes can't be written by container root without some supervision
> (the capability ones are the hugely problematic ones from this point of
> view), but for some there's no reason they shouldn't be.  What would be
> the reason that root in a container shouldn't be able to write the ima
> xattr the same as host root could on its filesystem?

Mimi said she ``native''.  It competely makes sense for the things that
the container doesn't ``own'' to not be allowed to be written/updated by
the container.

James you are making the case here for root in the container to write
to the ima and evm attributes that are for the container.

So I don't actually see any disagreement here except perhaps for
terminology.

Eric