Re: [PATCH v1 2/2] signal: add procfd_signal() syscall

[Christian Brauner]

On Mon, Nov 19, 2018 at 01:26:22PM -0800, Daniel Colascione wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 19, 2018 at 1:21 PM, Christian Brauner <christian@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > That can be done without a loop by comparing the level counter for the
> > two pid namespaces.
> >
> >>
> >> And you can rewrite pidns_get_parent to use it. So you would instead be
> >> doing:
> >>
> >>     if (pidns_is_descendant(proc_pid_ns, task_active_pid_ns(current)))
> >>         return -EPERM;
> >>
> >> (Or you can just copy the 5-line loop into procfd_signal -- though I
> >> imagine we'll need this for all of the procfd_* APIs.)
> 
> Why is any of this even necessary? Why does the child namespace we're
> considering even have a file descriptor to its ancestor's procfs? If

Because you can send file descriptors between processes and container
runtimes tend to do that.

> it has one of these FDs, it can already *read* all sorts of
> information it really shouldn't be able to acquire, so the additional
> ability to send a signal (subject to the usual permission checks)
> feels like sticking a finger in a dike that's already well-perforated.
> IMHO, we shouldn't bother with this check. The patch would be simpler
> without it.

We will definitely not allow signaling processes in an ancestor pid
namespace! That is a security issue! I can imagine container runtimes
killing their monitoring process etc. pp. Not happening, unless someone
with deep expertise in signals can convince me otherwise.