14 Nov, 2008

1 commit

  • Inaugurate copy-on-write credentials management. This uses RCU to manage the
    credentials pointer in the task_struct with respect to accesses by other tasks.
    A process may only modify its own credentials, and so does not need locking to
    access or modify its own credentials.

    A mutex (cred_replace_mutex) is added to the task_struct to control the effect
    of PTRACE_ATTACHED on credential calculations, particularly with respect to
    execve().

    With this patch, the contents of an active credentials struct may not be
    changed directly; rather a new set of credentials must be prepared, modified
    and committed using something like the following sequence of events:

    struct cred *new = prepare_creds();
    int ret = blah(new);
    if (ret < 0) {
    abort_creds(new);
    return ret;
    }
    return commit_creds(new);

    There are some exceptions to this rule: the keyrings pointed to by the active
    credentials may be instantiated - keyrings violate the COW rule as managing
    COW keyrings is tricky, given that it is possible for a task to directly alter
    the keys in a keyring in use by another task.

    To help enforce this, various pointers to sets of credentials, such as those in
    the task_struct, are declared const. The purpose of this is compile-time
    discouragement of altering credentials through those pointers. Once a set of
    credentials has been made public through one of these pointers, it may not be
    modified, except under special circumstances:

    (1) Its reference count may incremented and decremented.

    (2) The keyrings to which it points may be modified, but not replaced.

    The only safe way to modify anything else is to create a replacement and commit
    using the functions described in Documentation/credentials.txt (which will be
    added by a later patch).

    This patch and the preceding patches have been tested with the LTP SELinux
    testsuite.

    This patch makes several logical sets of alteration:

    (1) execve().

    This now prepares and commits credentials in various places in the
    security code rather than altering the current creds directly.

    (2) Temporary credential overrides.

    do_coredump() and sys_faccessat() now prepare their own credentials and
    temporarily override the ones currently on the acting thread, whilst
    preventing interference from other threads by holding cred_replace_mutex
    on the thread being dumped.

    This will be replaced in a future patch by something that hands down the
    credentials directly to the functions being called, rather than altering
    the task's objective credentials.

    (3) LSM interface.

    A number of functions have been changed, added or removed:

    (*) security_capset_check(), ->capset_check()
    (*) security_capset_set(), ->capset_set()

    Removed in favour of security_capset().

    (*) security_capset(), ->capset()

    New. This is passed a pointer to the new creds, a pointer to the old
    creds and the proposed capability sets. It should fill in the new
    creds or return an error. All pointers, barring the pointer to the
    new creds, are now const.

    (*) security_bprm_apply_creds(), ->bprm_apply_creds()

    Changed; now returns a value, which will cause the process to be
    killed if it's an error.

    (*) security_task_alloc(), ->task_alloc_security()

    Removed in favour of security_prepare_creds().

    (*) security_cred_free(), ->cred_free()

    New. Free security data attached to cred->security.

    (*) security_prepare_creds(), ->cred_prepare()

    New. Duplicate any security data attached to cred->security.

    (*) security_commit_creds(), ->cred_commit()

    New. Apply any security effects for the upcoming installation of new
    security by commit_creds().

    (*) security_task_post_setuid(), ->task_post_setuid()

    Removed in favour of security_task_fix_setuid().

    (*) security_task_fix_setuid(), ->task_fix_setuid()

    Fix up the proposed new credentials for setuid(). This is used by
    cap_set_fix_setuid() to implicitly adjust capabilities in line with
    setuid() changes. Changes are made to the new credentials, rather
    than the task itself as in security_task_post_setuid().

    (*) security_task_reparent_to_init(), ->task_reparent_to_init()

    Removed. Instead the task being reparented to init is referred
    directly to init's credentials.

    NOTE! This results in the loss of some state: SELinux's osid no
    longer records the sid of the thread that forked it.

    (*) security_key_alloc(), ->key_alloc()
    (*) security_key_permission(), ->key_permission()

    Changed. These now take cred pointers rather than task pointers to
    refer to the security context.

    (4) sys_capset().

    This has been simplified and uses less locking. The LSM functions it
    calls have been merged.

    (5) reparent_to_kthreadd().

    This gives the current thread the same credentials as init by simply using
    commit_thread() to point that way.

    (6) __sigqueue_alloc() and switch_uid()

    __sigqueue_alloc() can't stop the target task from changing its creds
    beneath it, so this function gets a reference to the currently applicable
    user_struct which it then passes into the sigqueue struct it returns if
    successful.

    switch_uid() is now called from commit_creds(), and possibly should be
    folded into that. commit_creds() should take care of protecting
    __sigqueue_alloc().

    (7) [sg]et[ug]id() and co and [sg]et_current_groups.

    The set functions now all use prepare_creds(), commit_creds() and
    abort_creds() to build and check a new set of credentials before applying
    it.

    security_task_set[ug]id() is called inside the prepared section. This
    guarantees that nothing else will affect the creds until we've finished.

    The calling of set_dumpable() has been moved into commit_creds().

    Much of the functionality of set_user() has been moved into
    commit_creds().

    The get functions all simply access the data directly.

    (8) security_task_prctl() and cap_task_prctl().

    security_task_prctl() has been modified to return -ENOSYS if it doesn't
    want to handle a function, or otherwise return the return value directly
    rather than through an argument.

    Additionally, cap_task_prctl() now prepares a new set of credentials, even
    if it doesn't end up using it.

    (9) Keyrings.

    A number of changes have been made to the keyrings code:

    (a) switch_uid_keyring(), copy_keys(), exit_keys() and suid_keys() have
    all been dropped and built in to the credentials functions directly.
    They may want separating out again later.

    (b) key_alloc() and search_process_keyrings() now take a cred pointer
    rather than a task pointer to specify the security context.

    (c) copy_creds() gives a new thread within the same thread group a new
    thread keyring if its parent had one, otherwise it discards the thread
    keyring.

    (d) The authorisation key now points directly to the credentials to extend
    the search into rather pointing to the task that carries them.

    (e) Installing thread, process or session keyrings causes a new set of
    credentials to be created, even though it's not strictly necessary for
    process or session keyrings (they're shared).

    (10) Usermode helper.

    The usermode helper code now carries a cred struct pointer in its
    subprocess_info struct instead of a new session keyring pointer. This set
    of credentials is derived from init_cred and installed on the new process
    after it has been cloned.

    call_usermodehelper_setup() allocates the new credentials and
    call_usermodehelper_freeinfo() discards them if they haven't been used. A
    special cred function (prepare_usermodeinfo_creds()) is provided
    specifically for call_usermodehelper_setup() to call.

    call_usermodehelper_setkeys() adjusts the credentials to sport the
    supplied keyring as the new session keyring.

    (11) SELinux.

    SELinux has a number of changes, in addition to those to support the LSM
    interface changes mentioned above:

    (a) selinux_setprocattr() no longer does its check for whether the
    current ptracer can access processes with the new SID inside the lock
    that covers getting the ptracer's SID. Whilst this lock ensures that
    the check is done with the ptracer pinned, the result is only valid
    until the lock is released, so there's no point doing it inside the
    lock.

    (12) is_single_threaded().

    This function has been extracted from selinux_setprocattr() and put into
    a file of its own in the lib/ directory as join_session_keyring() now
    wants to use it too.

    The code in SELinux just checked to see whether a task shared mm_structs
    with other tasks (CLONE_VM), but that isn't good enough. We really want
    to know if they're part of the same thread group (CLONE_THREAD).

    (13) nfsd.

    The NFS server daemon now has to use the COW credentials to set the
    credentials it is going to use. It really needs to pass the credentials
    down to the functions it calls, but it can't do that until other patches
    in this series have been applied.

    Signed-off-by: David Howells
    Acked-by: James Morris
    Signed-off-by: James Morris

    David Howells