Date:   Fri, 26 Aug 2022 10:10:51 +0100
From:   Ignat Korchagin <ignat@...udflare.com>
To:     "Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@...ssion.com>
Cc:     "Serge E. Hallyn" <serge@...lyn.com>,
        Paul Moore <paul@...l-moore.com>,
        Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Frederick Lawler <fred@...udflare.com>, kpsingh@...nel.org,
        revest@...omium.org, jackmanb@...omium.org, ast@...nel.org,
        daniel@...earbox.net, andrii@...nel.org, kafai@...com,
        songliubraving@...com, yhs@...com, john.fastabend@...il.com,
        jmorris@...ei.org, stephen.smalley.work@...il.com,
        eparis@...isplace.org, shuah@...nel.org,
        Christian Brauner <brauner@...nel.org>, casey@...aufler-ca.com,
        bpf@...r.kernel.org, linux-security-module@...r.kernel.org,
        selinux@...r.kernel.org, linux-kselftest@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-kernel <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        netdev <netdev@...r.kernel.org>,
        kernel-team <kernel-team@...udflare.com>, cgzones@...glemail.com,
        karl@...badwolfsecurity.com, tixxdz@...il.com
Subject: Re: [PATCH v5 0/4] Introduce security_create_user_ns()

On Thu, Aug 25, 2022 at 8:19 PM Paul Moore <paul@...l-moore.com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Aug 25, 2022 at 2:15 PM Eric W. Biederman <ebiederm@...ssion.com> wrote:
> > Paul Moore <paul@...l-moore.com> writes:
> > > On Fri, Aug 19, 2022 at 10:45 AM Serge E. Hallyn <serge@...lyn.com> wrote:
> > >>  I am hoping we can come up with
> > >> "something better" to address people's needs, make everyone happy, and
> > >> bring forth world peace.  Which would stack just fine with what's here
> > >> for defense in depth.
> > >>
> > >> You may well not be interested in further work, and that's fine.  I need
> > >> to set aside a few days to think on this.
> > >
> > > I'm happy to continue the discussion as long as it's constructive; I
> > > think we all are.  My gut feeling is that Frederick's approach falls
> > > closest to the sweet spot of "workable without being overly offensive"
> > > (*cough*), but if you've got an additional approach in mind, or an
> > > alternative approach that solves the same use case problems, I think
> > > we'd all love to hear about it.
> >
> > I would love to actually hear the problems people are trying to solve so
> > that we can have a sensible conversation about the trade offs.
>
> Here are several taken from the previous threads, it's surely not a
> complete list, but it should give you a good idea:
>
> https://lore.kernel.org/linux-security-module/CAHC9VhQnPAsmjmKo-e84XDJ1wmaOFkTKPjjztsOa9Yrq+AeAQA@mail.gmail.com/
>
> > As best I can tell without more information people want to use
> > the creation of a user namespace as a signal that the code is
> > attempting an exploit.
>
> Some use cases are like that, there are several other use cases that
> go beyond this; see all of our previous discussions on this
> topic/patchset.  As has been mentioned before, there are use cases
> that require improved observability, access control, or both.
>
> > As such let me propose instead of returning an error code which will let
> > the exploit continue, have the security hook return a bool.  With true
> > meaning the code can continue and on false it will trigger using SIGSYS
> > to terminate the program like seccomp does.
>
> Having the kernel forcibly exit the process isn't something that most
> LSMs would likely want.  I suppose we could modify the hook/caller so
> that *if* an LSM wanted to return SIGSYS the system would kill the
> process, but I would want that to be something in addition to
> returning an error code like LSMs normally do (e.g. EACCES).

I would also add here that seccomp allows more flexibility than just
delivering SIGSYS to a violating application. We can program seccomp
bpf to:
  * deliver a signal
  * return a CUSTOM error code (and BTW somehow this does not trigger
any requirements to change userapi or document in manpages: in my toy
example in [1] I'm delivering ENETDOWN from a uname(2) system call,
which is not documented in the man pages, but totally valid from a
seccomp usage perspective)
  * do-nothing, but log the action

So I would say the seccomp reference supports the current approach
more than the alternative approach of delivering SIGSYS as technically
an LSM implementation of the hook (at least in-kernel one) can chose
to deliver a signal to a task via kernel-api, but BPF-LSM (and others)
can deliver custom error codes and log the actions as well.

Ignat

> --
> paul-moore.com

[1]: https://blog.cloudflare.com/sandboxing-in-linux-with-zero-lines-of-code/

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