Re: User namespaces and keys

From: Serge E. Hallyn
Date: Wed Feb 23 2011 - 10:54:13 EST


Quoting Eric W. Biederman (ebiederm@xxxxxxxxxxxx):
> David Howells <dhowells@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>
> > Serge E. Hallyn <serge@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> >> > I guess we need to look at how to mix keys and namespaces again.
> >>
> >> From strictly kernel pov, at the moment, keys are strictly usable only
> >> by the user in your own user namespace.
> >
> > I'm not sure that's currently completely true. Key quota maintenance is
> > namespaced, and the key's owner UID/GID belong to that namespace, so that's
> > okay, but:
> >
> > (*) key_task_permission() does not distinguish UIDs and GIDs from different
> > namespaces.
> >
> > (*) A key can be referred to by its serial number, no matter whose namespace
> > it is in, and will yield up its given UID/GID, even if these aren't
> > actually meaningful in your namespace.
> >
> > This means request_key() can successfully upcall at the moment.
> >
> > I wonder if I should make the following changes:
> >
> > (1) If the key and the accessor are in different user namespaces, then skip
> > the UID and GID comparisons in key_task_permission(). That means that to
> > be able to access the key you'd have to possess the key and the key would
> > have to grant you Possessor access, or the key would have to grant you
> > Other access.
> >
> > (2) If the key and someone viewing the key description are in different
> > namespaces, then indicate that the UID and the GID are -1, irrespective of
> > the actual values.
> >
> > (3) When an upcall is attempting to instantiate a key, it is allowed to access
> > the keys of requestor using the requestor's credentials (UID, GID, groups,
> > security label). Ensure that this will be done in the requestor's user
> > namespace.
> >
> > Nothing should need to be done here, since search_process_keyrings()
> > switches to the requestor's creds.
> >
> > Oh, and are security labels user-namespaced?
>
> Not at this time. The user namespace as currently merged is little more
> than a place holder for a proper implementation. Serge is busily
> fleshing out that proper implementation.
>
> Until we reach the point where all checks that have historically been
> "if (uid1 == uid2)" become "if ((uidns1 == uidns2) && (uid1 == uid2))"
> there will be problems.
>
> The security labels and probably lsm's in general need to be per user
> namespace but we simply have not gotten that far. For the short term I
> will be happy when we get a minimally usable user namespace.

Note also that when Eric brought this up at the LSM mini-conf two or three
years ago, there was pretty general, strong objection to the idea.

Like Eric says, I think that'll have to wait. In the meantime, isolating
user namespace sandboxes (or containers) using simple LSM configurations
is a very good idea.

-serge
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