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Date:   Tue, 11 Apr 2023 16:08:45 +0200
From:   Christian Brauner <brauner@kernel.org>
To:     Jeff Layton <jlayton@kernel.org>
Cc:     Amir Goldstein <amir73il@gmail.com>,
        Stefan Berger <stefanb@linux.ibm.com>,
        Paul Moore <paul@paul-moore.com>, zohar@linux.ibm.com,
        linux-integrity@vger.kernel.org, miklos@szeredi.hu,
        linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
        linux-security-module@vger.kernel.org,
        linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, linux-unionfs@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] overlayfs: Trigger file re-evaluation by IMA / EVM after
 writes
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On Tue, Apr 11, 2023 at 06:13:15AM -0400, Jeff Layton wrote:
> On Tue, 2023-04-11 at 11:49 +0200, Christian Brauner wrote:
> > 
> > > 
> > > > Afaict, filesystems that persist i_version to disk automatically raise
> > > > SB_I_VERSION. I would guess that it be considered a bug if a filesystem
> > > > would persist i_version to disk and not raise SB_I_VERSION. If so IMA
> > > > should probably be made to check for IS_I_VERSION() and it will probably
> > > > get that by switching to vfs_getattr_nosec().
> > > 
> > > Not quite. SB_I_VERSION tells the vfs that the filesystem wants the
> > > kernel to manage the increment of the i_version for it. The filesystem
> > > is still responsible for persisting that value to disk (if appropriate).
> > 
> > Yes, sure it's the filesystems responsibility to persist it to disk or
> > not. What I tried to ask was that when a filesystem does persist
> > i_version to disk then would it be legal to mount it without
> > SB_I_VERSION (because ext2/ext3 did use to have that mount option)? If
> > it would then the filesystem would probably need to take care to leave
> > the i_version field in struct inode uninitialized to avoid confusion or
> > would that just work? (Mere curiosity, don't feel obligated to go into
> > detail here. I don't want to hog your time.)
> > 
> 
> In modern kernels, not setting SB_I_VERSION would mainly have the effect
> of stopping increments of i_version field on write. It would also mean
> that the STATX_CHANGE_COOKIE is not automatically reported via getattr.

Ah, good.

> 
> You probably wouldn't want to mount the fs without SB_I_VERSION set. The
> missing increments could trick an observer into believing that nothing
> had changed in the file across mounts when it actually had.

Yeah, that's what I thought and that would potentially be an attack on
IMA which is why I asked.

Thanks!
Christian