Re: [PATCH v4 1/1] fs: Allow no_new_privs tasks to call chroot(2)

From: Jann Horn <jannh@google.com>
To: "Mickaël Salaün" <mic@digikod.net>
Cc: "Al Viro" <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>,
	"James Morris" <jmorris@namei.org>,
	"Serge Hallyn" <serge@hallyn.com>,
	"Andy Lutomirski" <luto@amacapital.net>,
	"Casey Schaufler" <casey@schaufler-ca.com>,
	"Christian Brauner" <christian.brauner@ubuntu.com>,
	"Christoph Hellwig" <hch@lst.de>,
	"David Howells" <dhowells@redhat.com>,
	"Dominik Brodowski" <linux@dominikbrodowski.net>,
	"Eric W . Biederman" <ebiederm@xmission.com>,
	"John Johansen" <john.johansen@canonical.com>,
	"Kees Cook" <keescook@chromium.org>,
	"Kentaro Takeda" <takedakn@nttdata.co.jp>,
	"Tetsuo Handa" <penguin-kernel@i-love.sakura.ne.jp>,
	"Kernel Hardening" <kernel-hardening@lists.openwall.com>,
	linux-fsdevel <linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org>,
	"kernel list" <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
	linux-security-module <linux-security-module@vger.kernel.org>,
	"Mickaël Salaün" <mic@linux.microsoft.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v4 1/1] fs: Allow no_new_privs tasks to call chroot(2)
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2021 20:04:09 +0100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAG48ez3=M-5WT73HqmFJr6UHwO0+2FJXxcAgRzp6wcd0P3TN=Q@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20210316170135.226381-2-mic@digikod.net>

On Tue, Mar 16, 2021 at 6:02 PM Mickaël Salaün <mic@digikod.net> wrote:
> One could argue that chroot(2) is useless without a properly populated
> root hierarchy (i.e. without /dev and /proc).  However, there are
> multiple use cases that don't require the chrooting process to create
> file hierarchies with special files nor mount points, e.g.:
> * A process sandboxing itself, once all its libraries are loaded, may
>   not need files other than regular files, or even no file at all.
> * Some pre-populated root hierarchies could be used to chroot into,
>   provided for instance by development environments or tailored
>   distributions.
> * Processes executed in a chroot may not require access to these special
>   files (e.g. with minimal runtimes, or by emulating some special files
>   with a LD_PRELOADed library or seccomp).
>
> Unprivileged chroot is especially interesting for userspace developers
> wishing to harden their applications.  For instance, chroot(2) and Yama
> enable to build a capability-based security (i.e. remove filesystem
> ambient accesses) by calling chroot/chdir with an empty directory and
> accessing data through dedicated file descriptors obtained with
> openat2(2) and RESOLVE_BENEATH/RESOLVE_IN_ROOT/RESOLVE_NO_MAGICLINKS.

I don't entirely understand. Are you writing this with the assumption
that a future change will make it possible to set these RESOLVE flags
process-wide, or something like that?

As long as that doesn't exist, I think that to make this safe, you'd
have to do something like the following - let a child process set up a
new mount namespace for you, and then chroot() into that namespace's
root:

struct shared_data {
  int root_fd;
};
int helper_fn(void *args) {
  struct shared_data *shared = args;
  mount("none", "/tmp", "tmpfs", MS_NOSUID|MS_NODEV, "");
  mkdir("/tmp/old_root", 0700);
  pivot_root("/tmp", "/tmp/old_root");
  umount("/tmp/old_root", "");
  shared->root_fd = open("/", O_PATH);
}
void setup_chroot() {
  struct shared_data shared = {};
  prctl(PR_SET_NO_NEW_PRIVS, 1, 0, 0, 0);
  clone(helper_fn, my_stack,
CLONE_VFORK|CLONE_VM|CLONE_FILES|CLONE_NEWUSER|CLONE_NEWNS|SIGCHLD,
NULL);
  fchdir(shared.root_fd);
  chroot(".");
}

[...]
> diff --git a/fs/open.c b/fs/open.c
[...]
> +static inline int current_chroot_allowed(void)
> +{
> +       /*
> +        * Changing the root directory for the calling task (and its future
> +        * children) requires that this task has CAP_SYS_CHROOT in its
> +        * namespace, or be running with no_new_privs and not sharing its
> +        * fs_struct and not escaping its current root (cf. create_user_ns()).
> +        * As for seccomp, checking no_new_privs avoids scenarios where
> +        * unprivileged tasks can affect the behavior of privileged children.
> +        */
> +       if (task_no_new_privs(current) && current->fs->users == 1 &&

this read of current->fs->users should be using READ_ONCE()

> +                       !current_chrooted())
> +               return 0;
> +       if (ns_capable(current_user_ns(), CAP_SYS_CHROOT))
> +               return 0;
> +       return -EPERM;
> +}
[...]

Overall I think this change is a good idea.