02 Dec, 2014

1 commit

  • Simplify KEYRING_SEARCH_{NO,DO}_STATE_CHECK flags to be two variations of the
    same flag. They are effectively mutually exclusive and one or the other
    should be provided, but not both.

    Keyring cycle detection and key possession determination are the only things
    that set NO_STATE_CHECK, except that neither flag really does anything there
    because neither purpose makes use of the keyring_search_iterator() function,
    but rather provides their own.

    For cycle detection we definitely want to check inside of expired keyrings,
    just so that we don't create a cycle we can't get rid of. Revoked keyrings
    are cleared at revocation time and can't then be reused, so shouldn't be a
    problem either way.

    For possession determination, we *might* want to validate each keyring before
    searching it: do you possess a key that's hidden behind an expired or just
    plain inaccessible keyring? Currently, the answer is yes. Note that you
    cannot, however, possess a key behind a revoked keyring because they are
    cleared on revocation.

    keyring_search() sets DO_STATE_CHECK, which is correct.

    request_key_and_link() currently doesn't specify whether to check the key
    state or not - but it should set DO_STATE_CHECK.

    key_get_instantiation_authkey() also currently doesn't specify whether to
    check the key state or not - but it probably should also set DO_STATE_CHECK.

    Signed-off-by: David Howells
    Tested-by: Chuck Lever

    David Howells
     

17 Sep, 2014

3 commits

  • A previous patch added a ->match_preparse() method to the key type. This is
    allowed to override the function called by the iteration algorithm.
    Therefore, we can just set a default that simply checks for an exact match of
    the key description with the original criterion data and allow match_preparse
    to override it as needed.

    The key_type::match op is then redundant and can be removed, as can the
    user_match() function.

    Signed-off-by: David Howells
    Acked-by: Vivek Goyal

    David Howells
     
  • Preparse the match data. This provides several advantages:

    (1) The preparser can reject invalid criteria up front.

    (2) The preparser can convert the criteria to binary data if necessary (the
    asymmetric key type really wants to do binary comparison of the key IDs).

    (3) The preparser can set the type of search to be performed. This means
    that it's not then a one-off setting in the key type.

    (4) The preparser can set an appropriate comparator function.

    Signed-off-by: David Howells
    Acked-by: Vivek Goyal

    David Howells
     
  • Fix missing statics (found by checker).

    Signed-off-by: David Howells
    Acked-by: Vivek Goyal

    David Howells
     

23 Jul, 2014

1 commit


24 Sep, 2013

3 commits

  • Search for auth-key by name rather than by target key ID as, in a future
    patch, we'll by searching directly by index key in preference to iteration
    over all keys.

    Signed-off-by: David Howells

    David Howells
     
  • Search functions pass around a bunch of arguments, each of which gets copied
    with each call. Introduce a search context structure to hold these.

    Whilst we're at it, create a search flag that indicates whether the search
    should be directly to the description or whether it should iterate through all
    keys looking for a non-description match.

    This will be useful when keyrings use a generic data struct with generic
    routines to manage their content as the search terms can just be passed
    through to the iterator callback function.

    Also, for future use, the data to be supplied to the match function is
    separated from the description pointer in the search context. This makes it
    clear which is being supplied.

    Signed-off-by: David Howells

    David Howells
     
  • Skip key state checks (invalidation, revocation and expiration) when checking
    for possession. Without this, keys that have been marked invalid, revoked
    keys and expired keys are not given a possession attribute - which means the
    possessor is not granted any possession permits and cannot do anything with
    them unless they also have one a user, group or other permit.

    This causes failures in the keyutils test suite's revocation and expiration
    tests now that commit 96b5c8fea6c0861621051290d705ec2e971963f1 reduced the
    initial permissions granted to a key.

    The failures are due to accesses to revoked and expired keys being given
    EACCES instead of EKEYREVOKED or EKEYEXPIRED.

    Signed-off-by: David Howells

    David Howells
     

08 Oct, 2012

1 commit

  • Give the key type the opportunity to preparse the payload prior to the
    instantiation and update routines being called. This is done with the
    provision of two new key type operations:

    int (*preparse)(struct key_preparsed_payload *prep);
    void (*free_preparse)(struct key_preparsed_payload *prep);

    If the first operation is present, then it is called before key creation (in
    the add/update case) or before the key semaphore is taken (in the update and
    instantiate cases). The second operation is called to clean up if the first
    was called.

    preparse() is given the opportunity to fill in the following structure:

    struct key_preparsed_payload {
    char *description;
    void *type_data[2];
    void *payload;
    const void *data;
    size_t datalen;
    size_t quotalen;
    };

    Before the preparser is called, the first three fields will have been cleared,
    the payload pointer and size will be stored in data and datalen and the default
    quota size from the key_type struct will be stored into quotalen.

    The preparser may parse the payload in any way it likes and may store data in
    the type_data[] and payload fields for use by the instantiate() and update()
    ops.

    The preparser may also propose a description for the key by attaching it as a
    string to the description field. This can be used by passing a NULL or ""
    description to the add_key() system call or the key_create_or_update()
    function. This cannot work with request_key() as that required the description
    to tell the upcall about the key to be created.

    This, for example permits keys that store PGP public keys to generate their own
    name from the user ID and public key fingerprint in the key.

    The instantiate() and update() operations are then modified to look like this:

    int (*instantiate)(struct key *key, struct key_preparsed_payload *prep);
    int (*update)(struct key *key, struct key_preparsed_payload *prep);

    and the new payload data is passed in *prep, whether or not it was preparsed.

    Signed-off-by: David Howells
    Signed-off-by: Rusty Russell

    David Howells
     

14 Jun, 2011

1 commit


28 May, 2011

1 commit


20 May, 2011

1 commit


17 Mar, 2011

1 commit

  • Improve /proc/keys by:

    (1) Don't attempt to summarise the payload of a negated key. It won't have
    one. To this end, a helper function - key_is_instantiated() has been
    added that allows the caller to find out whether the key is positively
    instantiated (as opposed to being uninstantiated or negatively
    instantiated).

    (2) Do show keys that are negative, expired or revoked rather than hiding
    them. This requires an override flag (no_state_check) to be passed to
    search_my_process_keyrings() and keyring_search_aux() to suppress this
    check.

    Without this, keys that are possessed by the caller, but only grant
    permissions to the caller if possessed are skipped as the possession check
    fails.

    Keys that are visible due to user, group or other checks are visible with
    or without this patch.

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

    David Howells
     

22 Jan, 2011

2 commits

  • Fix up comments in the key management code. No functional changes.

    Signed-off-by: David Howells
    Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

    David Howells
     
  • Do a bit of a style clean up in the key management code. No functional
    changes.

    Done using:

    perl -p -i -e 's!^/[*]*/\n!!' security/keys/*.c
    perl -p -i -e 's!} /[*] end [a-z0-9_]*[(][)] [*]/\n!}\n!' security/keys/*.c
    sed -i -s -e ": next" -e N -e 's/^\n[}]$/}/' -e t -e P -e 's/^.*\n//' -e "b next" security/keys/*.c

    To remove /*****/ lines, remove comments on the closing brace of a
    function to name the function and remove blank lines before the closing
    brace of a function.

    Signed-off-by: David Howells
    Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

    David Howells
     

14 Nov, 2008

4 commits

  • 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
     
  • Separate the task security context from task_struct. At this point, the
    security data is temporarily embedded in the task_struct with two pointers
    pointing to it.

    Note that the Alpha arch is altered as it refers to (E)UID and (E)GID in
    entry.S via asm-offsets.

    With comment fixes Signed-off-by: Marc Dionne

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

    David Howells
     
  • Alter the use of the key instantiation and negation functions' link-to-keyring
    arguments. Currently this specifies a keyring in the target process to link
    the key into, creating the keyring if it doesn't exist. This, however, can be
    a problem for copy-on-write credentials as it means that the instantiating
    process can alter the credentials of the requesting process.

    This patch alters the behaviour such that:

    (1) If keyctl_instantiate_key() or keyctl_negate_key() are given a specific
    keyring by ID (ringid >= 0), then that keyring will be used.

    (2) If keyctl_instantiate_key() or keyctl_negate_key() are given one of the
    special constants that refer to the requesting process's keyrings
    (KEY_SPEC_*_KEYRING, all | Instantiator |------->| Instantiator |
    | | | | | |
    +-----------+ +--------------+ +--------------+
    request_key() request_key()

    This might be useful, for example, in Kerberos, where the requestor requests a
    ticket, and then the ticket instantiator requests the TGT, which someone else
    then has to go and fetch. The TGT, however, should be retained in the
    keyrings of the requestor, not the first instantiator. To make this explict
    an extra special keyring constant is also added.

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

    David Howells
     
  • Wrap access to task credentials so that they can be separated more easily from
    the task_struct during the introduction of COW creds.

    Change most current->(|e|s|fs)[ug]id to current_(|e|s|fs)[ug]id().

    Change some task->e?[ug]id to task_e?[ug]id(). In some places it makes more
    sense to use RCU directly rather than a convenient wrapper; these will be
    addressed by later patches.

    Signed-off-by: David Howells
    Reviewed-by: James Morris
    Acked-by: Serge Hallyn
    Signed-off-by: James Morris

    David Howells
     

29 Apr, 2008

2 commits

  • Since these two source files invoke kmalloc(), they should explicitly
    include .

    Signed-off-by: Robert P. J. Day
    Cc: David Howells
    Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton
    Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

    Robert P. J. Day
     
  • Allow the callout data to be passed as a blob rather than a string for
    internal kernel services that call any request_key_*() interface other than
    request_key(). request_key() itself still takes a NUL-terminated string.

    The functions that change are:

    request_key_with_auxdata()
    request_key_async()
    request_key_async_with_auxdata()

    Signed-off-by: David Howells
    Cc: Paul Moore
    Cc: Chris Wright
    Cc: Stephen Smalley
    Cc: James Morris
    Cc: Kevin Coffman
    Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton
    Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

    David Howells
     

08 Feb, 2008

1 commit


17 Oct, 2007

1 commit

  • Make request_key() and co fundamentally asynchronous to make it easier for
    NFS to make use of them. There are now accessor functions that do
    asynchronous constructions, a wait function to wait for construction to
    complete, and a completion function for the key type to indicate completion
    of construction.

    Note that the construction queue is now gone. Instead, keys under
    construction are linked in to the appropriate keyring in advance, and that
    anyone encountering one must wait for it to be complete before they can use
    it. This is done automatically for userspace.

    The following auxiliary changes are also made:

    (1) Key type implementation stuff is split from linux/key.h into
    linux/key-type.h.

    (2) AF_RXRPC provides a way to allocate null rxrpc-type keys so that AFS does
    not need to call key_instantiate_and_link() directly.

    (3) Adjust the debugging macros so that they're -Wformat checked even if
    they are disabled, and make it so they can be enabled simply by defining
    __KDEBUG to be consistent with other code of mine.

    (3) Documentation.

    [alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk: keys: missing word in documentation]
    Signed-off-by: David Howells
    Signed-off-by: Alan Cox
    Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton
    Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

    David Howells
     

27 Jun, 2006

1 commit

  • Add the ability for key creation to overrun the user's quota in some
    circumstances - notably when a session keyring is created and assigned to a
    process that didn't previously have one.

    This means it's still possible to log in, should PAM require the creation of a
    new session keyring, and fix an overburdened key quota.

    Signed-off-by: David Howells
    Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton
    Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

    David Howells
     

23 Jun, 2006

2 commits

  • Add a revocation notification method to the key type and calls it whilst
    the key's semaphore is still write-locked after setting the revocation
    flag.

    The patch then uses this to maintain a reference on the task_struct of the
    process that calls request_key() for as long as the authorisation key
    remains unrevoked.

    This fixes a potential race between two processes both of which have
    assumed the authority to instantiate a key (one may have forked the other
    for example). The problem is that there's no locking around the check for
    revocation of the auth key and the use of the task_struct it points to, nor
    does the auth key keep a reference on the task_struct.

    Access to the "context" pointer in the auth key must thenceforth be done
    with the auth key semaphore held. The revocation method is called with the
    target key semaphore held write-locked and the search of the context
    process's keyrings is done with the auth key semaphore read-locked.

    The check for the revocation state of the auth key just prior to searching
    it is done after the auth key is read-locked for the search. This ensures
    that the auth key can't be revoked between the check and the search.

    The revocation notification method is added so that the context task_struct
    can be released as soon as instantiation happens rather than waiting for
    the auth key to be destroyed, thus avoiding the unnecessary pinning of the
    requesting process.

    Signed-off-by: David Howells
    Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton
    Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

    David Howells
     
  • Introduce SELinux hooks to support the access key retention subsystem
    within the kernel. Incorporate new flask headers from a modified version
    of the SELinux reference policy, with support for the new security class
    representing retained keys. Extend the "key_alloc" security hook with a
    task parameter representing the intended ownership context for the key
    being allocated. Attach security information to root's default keyrings
    within the SELinux initialization routine.

    Has passed David's testsuite.

    Signed-off-by: Michael LeMay
    Signed-off-by: David Howells
    Signed-off-by: James Morris
    Acked-by: Chris Wright
    Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton
    Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

    Michael LeMay
     

09 Jan, 2006

1 commit

  • Make it possible for a running process (such as gssapid) to be able to
    instantiate a key, as was requested by Trond Myklebust for NFS4.

    The patch makes the following changes:

    (1) A new, optional key type method has been added. This permits a key type
    to intercept requests at the point /sbin/request-key is about to be
    spawned and do something else with them - passing them over the
    rpc_pipefs files or netlink sockets for instance.

    The uninstantiated key, the authorisation key and the intended operation
    name are passed to the method.

    (2) The callout_info is no longer passed as an argument to /sbin/request-key
    to prevent unauthorised viewing of this data using ps or by looking in
    /proc/pid/cmdline.

    This means that the old /sbin/request-key program will not work with the
    patched kernel as it will expect to see an extra argument that is no
    longer there.

    A revised keyutils package will be made available tomorrow.

    (3) The callout_info is now attached to the authorisation key. Reading this
    key will retrieve the information.

    (4) A new field has been added to the task_struct. This holds the
    authorisation key currently active for a thread. Searches now look here
    for the caller's set of keys rather than looking for an auth key in the
    lowest level of the session keyring.

    This permits a thread to be servicing multiple requests at once and to
    switch between them. Note that this is per-thread, not per-process, and
    so is usable in multithreaded programs.

    The setting of this field is inherited across fork and exec.

    (5) A new keyctl function (KEYCTL_ASSUME_AUTHORITY) has been added that
    permits a thread to assume the authority to deal with an uninstantiated
    key. Assumption is only permitted if the authorisation key associated
    with the uninstantiated key is somewhere in the thread's keyrings.

    This function can also clear the assumption.

    (6) A new magic key specifier has been added to refer to the currently
    assumed authorisation key (KEY_SPEC_REQKEY_AUTH_KEY).

    (7) Instantiation will only proceed if the appropriate authorisation key is
    assumed first. The assumed authorisation key is discarded if
    instantiation is successful.

    (8) key_validate() is moved from the file of request_key functions to the
    file of permissions functions.

    (9) The documentation is updated.

    From:

    Build fix.

    Signed-off-by: David Howells
    Cc: Trond Myklebust
    Cc: Alexander Zangerl
    Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton
    Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

    David Howells
     

09 Oct, 2005

2 commits


29 Sep, 2005

1 commit

  • The attached patch adds extra permission grants to keys for the possessor of a
    key in addition to the owner, group and other permissions bits. This makes
    SUID binaries easier to support without going as far as labelling keys and key
    targets using the LSM facilities.

    This patch adds a second "pointer type" to key structures (struct key_ref *)
    that can have the bottom bit of the address set to indicate the possession of
    a key. This is propagated through searches from the keyring to the discovered
    key. It has been made a separate type so that the compiler can spot attempts
    to dereference a potentially incorrect pointer.

    The "possession" attribute can't be attached to a key structure directly as
    it's not an intrinsic property of a key.

    Pointers to keys have been replaced with struct key_ref *'s wherever
    possession information needs to be passed through.

    This does assume that the bottom bit of the pointer will always be zero on
    return from kmem_cache_alloc().

    The key reference type has been made into a typedef so that at least it can be
    located in the sources, even though it's basically a pointer to an undefined
    type. I've also renamed the accessor functions to be more useful, and all
    reference variables should now end in "_ref".

    Signed-Off-By: David Howells
    Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

    David Howells
     

24 Jun, 2005

1 commit

  • The attached patch makes the following changes:

    (1) There's a new special key type called ".request_key_auth".

    This is an authorisation key for when one process requests a key and
    another process is started to construct it. This type of key cannot be
    created by the user; nor can it be requested by kernel services.

    Authorisation keys hold two references:

    (a) Each refers to a key being constructed. When the key being
    constructed is instantiated the authorisation key is revoked,
    rendering it of no further use.

    (b) The "authorising process". This is either:

    (i) the process that called request_key(), or:

    (ii) if the process that called request_key() itself had an
    authorisation key in its session keyring, then the authorising
    process referred to by that authorisation key will also be
    referred to by the new authorisation key.

    This means that the process that initiated a chain of key requests
    will authorise the lot of them, and will, by default, wind up with
    the keys obtained from them in its keyrings.

    (2) request_key() creates an authorisation key which is then passed to
    /sbin/request-key in as part of a new session keyring.

    (3) When request_key() is searching for a key to hand back to the caller, if
    it comes across an authorisation key in the session keyring of the
    calling process, it will also search the keyrings of the process
    specified therein and it will use the specified process's credentials
    (fsuid, fsgid, groups) to do that rather than the calling process's
    credentials.

    This allows a process started by /sbin/request-key to find keys belonging
    to the authorising process.

    (4) A key can be read, even if the process executing KEYCTL_READ doesn't have
    direct read or search permission if that key is contained within the
    keyrings of a process specified by an authorisation key found within the
    calling process's session keyring, and is searchable using the
    credentials of the authorising process.

    This allows a process started by /sbin/request-key to read keys belonging
    to the authorising process.

    (5) The magic KEY_SPEC_*_KEYRING key IDs when passed to KEYCTL_INSTANTIATE or
    KEYCTL_NEGATE will specify a keyring of the authorising process, rather
    than the process doing the instantiation.

    (6) One of the process keyrings can be nominated as the default to which
    request_key() should attach new keys if not otherwise specified. This is
    done with KEYCTL_SET_REQKEY_KEYRING and one of the KEY_REQKEY_DEFL_*
    constants. The current setting can also be read using this call.

    (7) request_key() is partially interruptible. If it is waiting for another
    process to finish constructing a key, it can be interrupted. This permits
    a request-key cycle to be broken without recourse to rebooting.

    Signed-Off-By: David Howells
    Signed-Off-By: Benoit Boissinot
    Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton
    Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

    David Howells