Re: [RFC PATCH] fs: Add user_file_or_path_at and use it for truncate

[Andy Lutomirski]

On Tue, Aug 27, 2013 at 11:16 PM, Al Viro <viro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 27, 2013 at 01:28:27PM -0700, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
>> There are also O_PATH fds, and I'm not sure what the semantics of
>> O_PATH fds are or should be when they refer to something other than a
>> directory.
>
> O_PATH file just points to specific location in the tree, no more and
> no less.

I don't know whether ftruncate(some O_PATH fd) should work.  But this
probably barely matters.

>
> g) name_to_handle_at().  Not sure if we need any capability checks, but
> we definitely don't give a damn about the way file had been opened.

open_by_handle(name_to_handle(read-only fd)) is dangerous for the same
reason that open("/proc/self/fd/N", O_RDWR) is, but the capability
checks have that covered.

>
> h) one case in quotactl().  With CAP_SYS_ADMIN required.  If attacker got
> that, it's too fucking late anyway.
>
> i) fstatat() and friends, statfs(), utimes() et.al, {set,get,list,remove}xattr()
> - no difference in checks between pathname- and descriptor-based calls
> anyway.  Please, note that for fsetxattr() we do *NOT* require the file
> to be opened for write; adding such requirement would be a user-visible
> API change, and one fairly likely to break stuff, at that.

Sigh.  I wonder if that was deliberate.  Anyway, it is what it is.

>
> j) umount() and pivot_root().  We really don't care how the file had been
> opened, and attacker capable of playing with that can do a lot more.
>
> k) inotify_add_watch()/fanotify_mark().  No descriptor-based versions,
> no permission checks other than "may read whatever we ended up with".
> I really doubt that we care about the way fd had been opened in case
> of /proc/<pid>/fd/<fd>.
>
> l) truncate() mess.
>
> m) open() mess.
>
> AFAICS, the *only* cases when we might possibly care are linkat() target,
> truncate() and open().  Note, BTW, that right now we *do* allow an attempt
> to reopen a file via procfs symlink r/w, even when file had been r/o.
> It's subject to permissions on the object being opened, but that's it.
>
> I'm not sure we can change that - again, it's a user-visible API, and
> the change is very likely to break some scripts.  In fact, it's about
> as dangerous as a full-blown switch to dup-style semantics for procfs
> opens, and it's a lot less attractive.
>
> For truncate() we would only need to have FMODE_WRITE reported, more or
> less the same way as FMODE_FLINK.  And without open() changes it doesn't
> buy us anything at all...
>
> I've no problem with unrolling the user_path_at() in do_sys_truncate()
> into an explicit loop by trailing symlinks and checking for indication
> left by proc_pid_follow_link(), more or less the same way as with
> LOOKUP_LINK in lookup_last().  It's _far_ less invasive than playing
> with "oh, here we fill a struct path or maybe a struct file" horrors,
> pinning struct file for no reason, etc.
>
> AFAICS, the real question is whether we dare to change open() behaviour on
> /proc/*/fd/*.  I've played with that a bit and I believe that I can do
> the switch to dup-style with very localized changes in fs/namei.c and
> fs/proc/{base,fd}.c.  Will be even binary compatible kernel-side -
> ->atomic_open() returns NULL/ERR_PTR where it used to return 0/-error,
> not that we had many instances to convert.  *IF* that variant is not
> out of consideration for userland API stability reasons, I would certainly
> prefer to go that way; turns out that these days we can pull it off without
> black magic in descriptor handling, etc.  Linus?

I personally find the check-mode-but-get-a-new-struct-file version to
be less weird that the dup approach.  Either approach will break
scripts that try to write to /dev/stdin (which is the whole point).

--Andy
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