Re: [REVIEW][PATCH 2/3] exec: Don't allow ptracing an exec of an unreadable file

[Andy Lutomirski]

On Thu, Nov 17, 2016 at 1:07 PM, Kees Cook <keescook@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 17, 2016 at 12:47 PM, Willy Tarreau <w@xxxxxx> wrote:
>> On Thu, Nov 17, 2016 at 11:08:22AM -0600, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
>>>
>>> It is the reasonable expectation that if an executable file is not
>>> readable there will be no way for a user without special privileges to
>>> read the file.  This is enforced in ptrace_attach but if we are
>>> already attached there is no enforcement if a readonly executable
>>> is exec'd.
>>
>> I'm really scared by this Eric. At least you want to make it a hardening
>> option that can be disabled at run time, otherwise it can easily break a
>> lot of userspace :
>>
>> admin@aloha:~$ ll /bin/bash /bin/coreutils /bin/ls /usr/bin/telnet
>> -r-xr-x--x 1 root adm 549272 Oct 28 16:25 /bin/bash
>> -rwx--x--x 1 root adm 765624 Oct 28 16:27 /bin/coreutils
>> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 Oct 28 16:27 /bin/ls -> coreutils
>> -r-xr-x--x 1 root adm  70344 Oct 28 16:34 /usr/bin/telnet
>>
>> And I've not invented it, I've being taught to do this more than 20
>> years ago and been doing this since on any slightly hardened server
>> just because in pratice it's efficient at stopping quite a bunch of
>> rootkits which require to copy and modify your executables. Sure
>> they could get the contents using ptrace, but using cp is much more
>> common than ptrace in scripts and that works. This has prooven quite
>> efficient in field at stopping some rootkits several times over the
>> last two decades and I know I'm not the only one to do it. In fact
>> I *never* install an executable with read permissions for users if
>> there's no need for random users to copy it. Does it mean that
>> nobody should be able to see why their favorite utility doesn't
>> work anymore ? Not in my opinion, at least not by default.
>>
>> So here I fear that we'll break strace at many places where strace
>> precisely matters to debug things.
>>
>> However I'd love to have this feature controlled by a sysctl (to
>> enforce it by default where possible).
>
> I'm not opposed to a sysctl for this. Regardless, I think we need to
> embrace this idea now, though, since we'll soon end up with
> architectures that enforce executable-only memory, in which case
> ptrace will again fail. Almost better to get started here and then not
> have more surprises later.

That won't be a problem because exec-only memory is going to need to
allow ptrace to read it anyway.

--Andy