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Date:   Mon, 1 Oct 2018 19:46:40 +1000
From:   Aleksa Sarai <cyphar@cyphar.com>
To:     Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net>
Cc:     Jann Horn <jannh@google.com>,
        "Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@xmission.com>, jlayton@kernel.org,
        Bruce Fields <bfields@fieldses.org>,
        Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>,
        Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>, shuah@kernel.org,
        David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>,
        Andy Lutomirski <luto@kernel.org>, christian@brauner.io,
        Tycho Andersen <tycho@tycho.ws>,
        kernel list <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
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        linux-arch <linux-arch@vger.kernel.org>,
        linux-kselftest@vger.kernel.org, dev@opencontainers.org,
        containers@lists.linux-foundation.org,
        Linux API <linux-api@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/3] namei: implement AT_THIS_ROOT chroot-like path
 resolution
Message-ID: <20181001090809.6t7ydq7gk2bwbout@ryuk>
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On 2018-09-29, Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net> wrote:
> >> On Sat, Sep 29, 2018 at 4:29 PM Aleksa Sarai <cyphar@cyphar.com> wrote:
> >> The primary motivation for the need for this flag is container runtimes
> >> which have to interact with malicious root filesystems in the host
> >> namespaces. One of the first requirements for a container runtime to be
> >> secure against a malicious rootfs is that they correctly scope symlinks
> >> (that is, they should be scoped as though they are chroot(2)ed into the
> >> container's rootfs) and ".."-style paths. The already-existing AT_XDEV
> >> and AT_NO_PROCLINKS help defend against other potential attacks in a
> >> malicious rootfs scenario.
> >=20
> > So, I really like the concept for patch 1 of this series (but haven't
> > read the code yet); but I dislike this patch because of its footgun
> > potential.
> >=20
>=20
> The code could do it differently: do the path walk and then, before
> accepting the result, walk back up and make sure the result is under
> the starting point.
>=20
> This is *not* a full solution, though, since a walk above the root gas
> side effects on timing, various caches, and possibly network traffic,
> so it=E2=80=99s open to Spectre-like attacks in which a malicious contain=
er
> could use a runtime-initiated AT_THIS_ROOT to infer the existence of
> directories outside the container.

I think that one way to solve this problem might be to have more strict
checks on nd->root in follow_dotdot(). The problem here (as far as I can
tell) is that ".." could end up skipping past the root because of a
rename, however walking *down* into a path shouldn't be a problem (even
absolute symlinks shouldn't be a problem because they will nd_jump_root
and will land back in the root).

However, I'm not entirely sure what happens to nd->root if it gets
renamed -- can you still safely do checks against it (we'd need to do
some sort of is_descendant() check on the current path before we handle
".." in follow_dotdot).

That way, we wouldn't shouldn't have the spectre-like attack problem
(since the attack would be halted at the ".." stage -- before the path
walk can proceed into host paths). Would this be sufficient or is there
a more serious issue I'm missing?

> But what=E2=80=99s the container usecase?  Any sane container is based on
> pivot_root or similar, so the runtime can just do the walk in the
> container context. IOW I=E2=80=99m a bit confused as to the exact intende=
d use
> of the whole series. Can you elaborate?

I went into this in my response to Jann.

--=20
Aleksa Sarai
Senior Software Engineer (Containers)
SUSE Linux GmbH
<https://www.cyphar.com/>

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