Date: Wed, 4 Nov 2015 19:28:13 +0100
From: Willy Tarreau <w@1wt.eu>
To: Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net>
Cc: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>,
        Dirk Steinmetz <public@rsjtdrjgfuzkfg.com>,
        Michael Kerrisk-manpages <mtk.manpages@gmail.com>,
        Serge Hallyn <serge.hallyn@ubuntu.com>,
        Seth Forshee <seth.forshee@canonical.com>,
        Alexander Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>,
        Linux FS Devel <linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org>,
        LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        "Eric W . Biederman" <ebiederm@xmission.com>,
        Serge Hallyn <serge.hallyn@canonical.com>,
        "security@kernel.org" <security@kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [RFC] namei: prevent sgid-hardlinks for unmapped gids
Message-ID: <20151104182813.GE22318@1wt.eu>
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On Wed, Nov 04, 2015 at 10:17:06AM -0800, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
> > That said I never feel completely comfortable with changing a file's
> > permissions this way, I always fear it could break backup/restore
> > applications. Let's imagine for a minute that a restore does this :
> >
> >  extract(const char *file_name, int file_perms) {
> >    fd = open(".tmpfile", O_CREAT, file_perms);
> >    mmap(fd);
> >    /* actually write file */
> >    close(fd);
> >    unlink(real_file_name);
> >    rename(".tmpfile", file_name);
> >  }
> >
> > Yes I know it's not safe to do the chmod before writing to the file
> > but we could imagine some situations where it makes sense to be done
> > this way (eg: if the file is put into a protected directory), and
> > anyway this possibility is provided by open() and creat() so it is
> > legitimate to imagine these ones could exist.
> >
> > Such a change would slightly modify semantics and affect such use cases
> > *if they exist*, just like using write() instead of mmap() would fail.
> > We could imagine having a sysctl to disable this strengthening, but it
> > is probably not the best solution for the long term either.
> 
> I'd say that this is an acceptable breakage risk.

Yes probably.

> In any event, the
> potential for data loss is limited to a bit of the file mode,

When this bit is the one sudo's setuid, it becomes one of the most important
bits on the whole system :-)

> and
> restore apps like that really don't deserve to work in the first
> place.

I absolutely agree for this specific case. I just wanted to raise this
case so that we're sure not to oversee anything related to other similar
but more justified use cases.

Willy

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