From: Christian Brauner <christian.brauner@ubuntu.com>
To: Solar Designer <solar@openwall.com>
Cc: CGEL <cgel.zte@gmail.com>,
peterz@infradead.org, tglx@linutronix.de,
linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
Ran Xiaokai <ran.xiaokai@zte.com.cn>,
James Morris <jamorris@linux.microsoft.com>,
Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>,
Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>, NeilBrown <neilb@suse.de>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] set_user: add capability check when rlimit(RLIMIT_NPROC) exceeds
Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2021 12:01:40 +0200 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20210913100140.bxqlg47pushoqa3r@wittgenstein> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20210908102400.GA22799@openwall.com>
On Wed, Sep 08, 2021 at 12:24:00PM +0200, Solar Designer wrote:
> Here's a further observation:
>
> On Tue, Sep 07, 2021 at 11:30:42PM +0200, Solar Designer wrote:
> > As I understand, the resulting commit:
> >
> > https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=2863643fb8b92291a7e97ba46e342f1163595fa8
> >
> > broke RLIMIT_NPROC support for Apache httpd suexec and likely similar.
>
> The commit above tries to make things consistent by duplicating the
> check from copy_process() also in set_user(). However, the check isn't
> actually the same because set_user(new) is called _before_
> security_task_fix_setuid(new, ...), whereas in the described detour via
> fork() its check would be reached already as the new user. So those
> capable() calls just look the same, but are actually very different, and
> that's the problem. My current understanding is the commit actually
> increases inconsistency.
>
> The commit message starts with:
>
> "in copy_process(): non root users but with capability CAP_SYS_RESOURCE
> or CAP_SYS_ADMIN will clean PF_NPROC_EXCEEDED flag even
> rlimit(RLIMIT_NPROC) exceeds. Add the same capability check logic here."
>
> It talks about the obscure case of "non root users but with capability".
> However, the capable() calls added by the commit actually also apply to
> root, such as in suexec.
>
> > Anyway, now I suggest that 2863643fb8b92291a7e97ba46e342f1163595fa8 be
> > reverted, and if there's any reason to make any change (what reason?
> > mere consistency or any real issue?) then I suggest that the flag
> > resetting on fork() be made conditional. Something like this:
> >
> > if (atomic_read(&p->real_cred->user->processes) >=
> > task_rlimit(p, RLIMIT_NPROC)) {
> > if (p->real_cred->user != INIT_USER &&
> > !capable(CAP_SYS_RESOURCE) && !capable(CAP_SYS_ADMIN))
> > goto bad_fork_free;
> > - }
> > - current->flags &= ~PF_NPROC_EXCEEDED;
> > + } else
> > + current->flags &= ~PF_NPROC_EXCEEDED;
>
> Alternatively, we could postpone the set_user() calls until we're
> running with the new user's capabilities, but that's an invasive change
> that's likely to create its own issues. So my suggestion above holds.
Thanks for taking a look at this. We can surely revert this. Fwiw,
given how non-obvious this whole thing turned out to be a few comments
in the code would've been helpful. I'll try to send a revert by the end
of this week with your explanations added in the revert message.
Christian
prev parent reply other threads:[~2021-09-13 10:01 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 8+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2021-07-28 7:26 [PATCH] set_user: add capability check when rlimit(RLIMIT_NPROC) exceeds cgel.zte
2021-07-28 11:59 ` Christian Brauner
2021-07-30 8:23 ` CGEL
2021-08-03 10:03 ` CGEL
2021-08-03 14:07 ` Christian Brauner
2021-09-07 21:30 ` Solar Designer
2021-09-08 10:24 ` Solar Designer
2021-09-13 10:01 ` Christian Brauner [this message]
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