Re: [kernel-hardening] Re: [PATCH v6 0/2] security: tty: make TIOCSTI ioctl require CAP_SYS_ADMIN

[Alan Cox]

> > So tty stuff should under a tty capabilities.  
> 
> (last reply on this)
> 
> Currently capabilities.7 says
> 
>               * employ  the  TIOCSTI ioctl(2) to insert characters into the input queue of a
>                 terminal other than the caller's controlling terminal;
> 
> for CAP_SYS_ADMIN.
> 
> So you can create a new CAP_SYS_TIOCSSTI if you like, and offer a patch where
> *both* CAP_SYS_ADMIN and CAP_SYS_ADMIN suffice.  Again, see CAP_SYSLOG for a
> prior example.

Even then it wouldn't be useful because the attacker can use every other
interface in the tty layer, many of which you can't magic away behind a
capability bit. And the applications would need changing to use the
feature - at which point any theoretical broken apps can instead be fixed
to use a pty/tty pair and actually fix the real problem.

Alan