Re: [RFC PATCH v9 0/3] Add introspect_access(2) (was O_MAYEXEC)

From: "Mickaël Salaün" <mic@digikod.net>
To: Matthew Wilcox <willy@infradead.org>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, "Aleksa Sarai" <cyphar@cyphar.com>,
	"Alexei Starovoitov" <ast@kernel.org>,
	"Al Viro" <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>,
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	"Casey Schaufler" <casey@schaufler-ca.com>,
	"Christian Brauner" <christian.brauner@ubuntu.com>,
	"Christian Heimes" <christian@python.org>,
	"Daniel Borkmann" <daniel@iogearbox.net>,
	"Deven Bowers" <deven.desai@linux.microsoft.com>,
	"Dmitry Vyukov" <dvyukov@google.com>,
	"Eric Biggers" <ebiggers@kernel.org>,
	"Eric Chiang" <ericchiang@google.com>,
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Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH v9 0/3] Add introspect_access(2) (was O_MAYEXEC)
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 2020 19:47:09 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <18ff83c0-d128-76bc-1081-82e3a3c51616@digikod.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <f6e2358c-8e5e-e688-3e66-2cdd943e360e@digikod.net>

On 10/09/2020 19:21, Mickaël Salaün wrote:
> 
> On 10/09/2020 19:04, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
>> On Thu, Sep 10, 2020 at 06:46:09PM +0200, Mickaël Salaün wrote:
>>> This ninth patch series rework the previous AT_INTERPRETED and O_MAYEXEC
>>> series with a new syscall: introspect_access(2) .  Access check are now
>>> only possible on a file descriptor, which enable to avoid possible race
>>> conditions in user space.
>>
>> But introspection is about examining _yourself_.  This isn't about
>> doing that.  It's about doing ... something ... to a script that you're
>> going to execute.  If the script were going to call the syscall, then
>> it might be introspection.  Or if the interpreter were measuring itself,
>> that would be introspection.  But neither of those would be useful things
>> to do, because an attacker could simply avoid doing them.
> 
> Picking a good name other than "access" (or faccessat2) is not easy. The
> idea with introspect_access() is for the calling task to ask the kernel
> if this task should allows to do give access to a kernel resource which
> is already available to this task. In this sense, we think that
> introspection makes sense because it is the choice of the task to allow
> or deny an access.
> 
>>
>> So, bad name.  What might be better?  sys_security_check()?
>> sys_measure()?  sys_verify_fd()?  I don't know.
>>
> 
> "security_check" looks quite broad, "measure" doesn't make sense here,
> "verify_fd" doesn't reflect that it is an access check. Yes, not easy,
> but if this is the only concern we are on the good track. :)
> 
> 
> Other ideas:
> - interpret_access (mainly, but not only, for interpreters)
> - indirect_access
> - may_access
> - faccessat3
> 

I think that entrusted_access(2) looks good. What do you think?