Re: [PATCH] futex: do not leak robust list to unprivileged process

From: Thomas Gleixner
Date: Thu Mar 22 2012 - 19:46:34 EST


On Tue, 20 Mar 2012, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> * Kees Cook <keescook@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > On Tue, Mar 20, 2012 at 10:02 AM, Thomas Gleixner <tglx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > I really wonder why we have this syscall at all.
> >
> > The documentation I found yesterday while looking at this was:
> > http://linux.die.net/man/2/get_robust_list
> >
> > Which says "The system call is only available for debugging
> > purposes and is not needed for normal operations. Both system
> > calls are not available to application programs as functions;
> > they can be called using the syscall(3) function."
> >
> > Dropping the syscall entirely would certainly make it secure.
> > ;)
>
> The thinking was API completeness. In general it's possible for
> a sufficiently privileged task to figure out all the state of a
> task. We can query timers, fds - the robust list is such a
> resource as well. The information leakage was obviously not
> intended.

So I think it's safe to take Kees' patch as is. On top of that we
should add a WARN_ONCE when the syscall is invoked and schedule the
sucker for removal.

Thoughts ?

tglx
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/