Re: [PATCH] fs: Make /proc/sys inodes be owned by global root.

From: Eric W. Biederman
Date: Sat Dec 01 2018 - 08:56:12 EST


Radoslaw Burny <rburny@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:

> On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 6:29 AM Eric W. Biederman <ebiederm@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>
> > On Mon, Nov 26, 2018 at 06:26:07PM +0100, Radoslaw Burny wrote:
> >> Due to a recent commit (d151ddc00498 - fs: Update i_[ug]id_(read|write)
> >> to translate relative to s_user_ns),
> >
> > Recent? This is commit is from 2014 and present upstream since v4.8.
> > And the commit ID you mentioned in your commit log seems to be
> > incorrect. I get:
> >
> > 81754357770ebd900801231e7bc8d151ddc00498a fs: Update i_[ug]id_(read|write) to translate relative to s_user_ns
> >
> >> inodes under /proc/sys have -1
> >> written to their i_uid/i_gid members if a containing userns does not
> >> have entries for root in the uid/gid_map.
> >
> > Thanks for the description of how to run into the issue described but
> > is there also a practical use case today where this is happening? I ask
> > as it would be good to know the severity of the issue in the real world
> > today.
>
> People trying to run containers without a root user in the container.
> It atypical but something doable.
>
> >> This wouldn't normally matter, because these values are not used for
> >> access checks. However, a later change (0bd23d09b874 - Don't modify
> >> inodes with a uid or gid unknown to the vfs) changes the kernel to
> >> prevent opens for write if the i_uid/i_gid field in the inode is -1,
> >> even if the /proc/sys-specific access checks would otherwise pass.
> >>
> >> This causes a problem: in a userns without root mapping, even the
> >> namespace creator cannot write to e.g. /proc/sys/kernel/shmmax.
> >> This change fixes the problem by overriding i_uid/i_gid back to
> >> GLOBAL_ROOT_UID/GID.
> >
> > We really need Seth and Eric to provide guidance here as they were
> > the ones devising this long ago, but to me your solution seems backward.
> > Why allow any namespace to muck with /proc/sys/ seettings?
>
> There are many per namespace sysctls. Most of them are in the
> networking stack.
>
> > Let's recall that this case was a corner case, and writeback was the
> > biggest concern, and for that it was decided that you'd simply not get
> > write access, and so its read only. Its not clear to me if things like
> > proc were considered. For the regular file case the situation can be
> > addressed with chown, however we can't chown proc files.
> >
> >> Tested: Used a repro program that creates a user namespace without any
> >> mapping and stat'ed /proc/$PID/root/proc/sys/kernel/shmmax from outside.
> >> Before the change, it shows uid/gid of 65534,
> >
> > I thought you said it would be uid/gid -1 without your patch?
>
> It is INVALID_UID/INVALID_GID. It is an over simplifcation to call
> them -1. As they are not a valid value and are never mapped in any
> user namespace they are displayed as the overflow_uid or overflow_gid
> which is 65534 by default.
>
> >> with the change it's 0.
> >
> > Note that a good way to also test issues is with the lib/test_sysctl.c
> > module and the tools/testing/selftests/sysctl/sysctl.sh script, so if
> > you can device a test there, once we decide what to do that would be
> > appreciated.
>
> We spoke about this at LPC. And this is the correct behavioral change.
>
> The problem is there is a default value for i_uid and i_gid that is
> correct in the general case. That default value is not corect for
> sysctl, because proc is weird. As the sysctl permission check in
> test_perm are all against GLOBAL_ROOT_UID and GLOBAL_ROOT_GID we did not
> notice that i_uid and i_gid were being set wrong.
>
> So all this patch does is fix the default values i_uid and i_gid.
>
> The commit comment seems worth cleaning up. But for the
> content of the code.
>
> I expect when I have a few moments I will pick this change up.
>
> Reviewed-by: "Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> Eric
>
> Thanks, Eric. Should I send a v2 patch with an updated description,
> or can you just modify the description when applying this one?

I am absolutely swampped and moving at the moment. Can you please
send a v2 with an updated description.

Thank you,
Eric

>
> >> Signed-off-by: Radoslaw Burny <rburny@xxxxxxxxxx>
> >> ---
> >> fs/proc/proc_sysctl.c | 4 ++++
> >> 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+)
> >>
> >> diff --git a/fs/proc/proc_sysctl.c b/fs/proc/proc_sysctl.c
> >> index c5cbbdff3c3d..67379a389658 100644
> >> --- a/fs/proc/proc_sysctl.c
> >> +++ b/fs/proc/proc_sysctl.c
> >> @@ -499,6 +499,10 @@ static struct inode *proc_sys_make_inode(struct super_block *sb,
> >>
> >> if (root->set_ownership)
> >> root->set_ownership(head, table, &inode->i_uid, &inode->i_gid);
> >> + else {
> >> + inode->i_uid = GLOBAL_ROOT_UID;
> >> + inode->i_gid = GLOBAL_ROOT_GID;
> >> + }
> >>
> >> out:
> >> return inode;
> >> --
> >> 2.20.0.rc0.387.gc7a69e6b6c-goog
> >>