[Devel] Re: [BIG RFC] Filesystem-based checkpoint

[Eric W. Biederman]

Dave Hansen <dave at linux.vnet.ibm.com> writes:

>> I was thinking about restore.  Creating objects with a certain id can
>> easily be a security risk if you are not creating the namespace those
>> objects live in at the same time.  There is currently the downside
>> that we can't create namespaces as unprivileged users ( The
>> implementation of suid is so annoying). But the general concept still
>> applies, and if we ever get the uid namespace correct we will be able
>> to create namespaces as unprivileged users.
>
> Eric, you were saying that my interface had way too many "dangerous
> syscalls".  How does this relate to user namespaces and creating objects
> with particular ids?  Surely if the true problem with my suggested
> approach has to do with creating empty namespaces, the same problem
> exists with the sys_checkpoint() approach.

Ok. Some concrete examples to put this in context.

First the class of problem I am talking about is the classic unix temp file
security hole.

A specific example is fork_and_set_child_pid();

Suppose there is a important system daemon that dies and it's pid is 23.
It dies and doesn't delete it's pid file.
A malicious user notices this and does for_and_set_child_pid(23);
Later someone checks to see if the important system daemon is running,
sees a process at pid 23, and so does not restart it.
A DOS attack.

In a sys_restore() scenario at the very start you can check to make
certain that the reference count for the namespaces is 1 and that they
are empty.  Which means there is no chance of confusing user space.

With fork_and_set_child_pid() what is a simple cheap one time check
becomes an expensive painful one, if you can even implement it at all.

The difference is that with a bunch of small pieces you loose atomicity. 

Eric


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