Re: [PATCH 0/5] Security: Provide unioned file support

From: Stephen Smalley
Date: Wed Sep 30 2015 - 10:41:53 EST


On 09/29/2015 05:03 PM, Stephen Smalley wrote:
On 09/28/2015 04:00 PM, David Howells wrote:

The attached patches provide security support for unioned files where the
security involves an object-label-based LSM (such as SELinux) rather
than a
path-based LSM.

[Note that a number of the bits that were in the original patch set
are now
upstream and I've rebased on Casey's changes to the security hook system]

The patches can be broken down into two sets:

(1) A patch to add LSM hooks to handle copy up of a file, including
label
determination/setting and xattr filtration and a patch to have
overlayfs call the hooks during the copy-up procedure.

(2) My SELinux implementations of these hooks. I do three things:

(a) Don't copy up SELinux xattrs from the lower file to the upper
file. It is assumed that the upper file will be created
with the
attrs we want or the selinux_inode_copy_up() hook will set it
appropriately.

The reason there are two separate hooks here is that
selinux_inode_copy_up_xattr() might not ever be called if there
aren't actually any xattrs on the lower inode.

(b) I try to derive a label to be used by file operations by, in
order
of preference: using the label on the union inode if there
is one
(the normal overlayfs case); using the override label set
on the
superblock, if provided; or trying to derive a new label by
sid
transition operation.

(c) Using the label obtained in (b) in file_has_perm() rather than
using the label on the lower inode.

Now the steps I have outlined in (b) and (c) seem to be at odds with what
Dan Walsh and Stephen Smalley want - but I'm not sure I follow what that
is, let alone how to do it:

Wanted to bring back the original proposal. Stephen suggested that
we could change back to the MLS way of handling labels.

In MCS we base the MCS label of content created by a process on the
containing directory. Which means that if a process running as
s0:c1,c2 creates content in a directory labeled s0, it will get
created as s0.

In MLS if a process running as s0:c1,c2 creates content in a
directory it labels it s0:c1,c2. No matter what the label of the
directory is. (Well actually if the directory is not ranged the
process will not be able to create the content.)

We changed the default for MCS in Rawhide for about a week, when I
realized this was a huge problem for containers sharing content.
Currently if you want two containers to share the same volume
mount, we label the content as svirt_sandbox_file_t:s0 If one
process running as s0:c1,c2 creates content it gets created as s0,
if the second container process is running as s0:c3,c4, it can
still read/write the content. If we changed the default the object
would get created as s0:c1,c2 and process runing as s0:c3,c4 would
be blocked.

So I had it reverted back to the standard MCS Mode.

If we could get the default to be MLS mode on COW file systems and
MCS on Volumes, we would get the best of both worlds.

How are you testing this?
I tried as follows:

# Make sure we have a policy that is using xattrs to label overlay inodes.
$ seinfo --fs_use | grep overlay
fs_use_xattr overlay system_u:object_r:fs_t:s0

# Define some types for the different directories involved.
$ cat overlay.te
policy_module(overlay, 1.0)

type lower_t;
files_type(lower_t)

type upper_t;
files_type(upper_t)

type work_t;
files_type(work_t)

type merged_t;
files_type(merged_t)

$ make -f /usr/share/selinux/devel/Makefile overlay.pp
$ sudo semodule -i overlay.pp

# Create and label the different directories involved.
$ mkdir lower upper work merged
$ chcon -t lower_t lower
$ chcon -t upper_t upper
$ chcon -t work_t work
$ chcon -t merged_t merged

# Populate lower
$ echo "lower" > lower/a
$ mkdir lower/b

# Mount overlay
$ sudo mount -t overlay -o lowerdir=lower,upperdir=upper,workdir=work
merged

# Look at the merged dir and labels.
$ ls -Z merged
unconfined_u:object_r:lower_t:s0 a
unconfined_u:object_r:lower_t:s0 b

# Write/create some files/directories.
$ echo "foo" >> merged/a
$ mkdir merged/b/c
$ mkdir merged/c

# Look again.
$ ls -ZR merged
merged:
unconfined_u:object_r:lower_t:s0 a unconfined_u:object_r:upper_t:s0 c
unconfined_u:object_r:lower_t:s0 b

merged/b:
unconfined_u:object_r:work_t:s0 c

merged/b/c:

$ ls -ZR upper
upper:
unconfined_u:object_r:work_t:s0 a unconfined_u:object_r:upper_t:s0 c
unconfined_u:object_r:work_t:s0 b

upper/b:
unconfined_u:object_r:work_t:s0 c

upper/b/c:

Note that the copied-up file (a) and directory (b) are labeled lower_t
in the overlay, but work_t in the upper dir, and neither of those is
really what we want IIUC.

And that's just the labeling question. Then there is the question of
what permission checks were applied during those copy-up operations and
whether the current process ends up needing write permissions to them all.

Also, the labels on the overlay inodes change if you umount and then mount it again:

$ sudo umount merged
$ sudo mount -t overlay overlay -o lowerdir=lower,upperdir=upper,workdir=work merged
$ ls -ZR merged
merged:
unconfined_u:object_r:work_t:s0 a unconfined_u:object_r:upper_t:s0 c
unconfined_u:object_r:work_t:s0 b

merged/b:
unconfined_u:object_r:work_t:s0 c

merged/b/c:

merged/c:

It seems to me that either the copied-up files should be labeled upper_t (i.e. from upperdir) or merged_t (i.e. from the overlay). But certainly not lower_t (which is supposed to be read-only to the container) or work_t (which isn't supposed to be directly accessed by processes in the first place).

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