[PATCH v13 5/9] namei: LOOKUP_IN_ROOT: chroot-like path resolution

From: Aleksa Sarai
Date: Mon Sep 30 2019 - 17:03:43 EST


The primary motivation for the need for this flag is container runtimes
which have to interact with malicious root filesystems in the host
namespaces. One of the first requirements for a container runtime to be
secure against a malicious rootfs is that they correctly scope symlinks
(that is, they should be scoped as though they are chroot(2)ed into the
container's rootfs) and ".."-style paths[*]. The already-existing
LOOKUP_NO_XDEV and LOOKUP_NO_MAGICLINKS help defend against other
potential attacks in a malicious rootfs scenario.

Currently most container runtimes try to do this resolution in
userspace[1], causing many potential race conditions. In addition, the
"obvious" alternative (actually performing a {ch,pivot_}root(2))
requires a fork+exec (for some runtimes) which is *very* costly if
necessary for every filesystem operation involving a container.

[*] At the moment, ".." and magic-link jumping are disallowed for the
same reason it is disabled for LOOKUP_BENEATH -- currently it is not
safe to allow it. Future patches may enable it unconditionally once
we have resolved the possible races (for "..") and semantics (for
magic-link jumping).

The most significant *at(2) semantic change with LOOKUP_IN_ROOT is that
absolute pathnames no longer cause the dirfd to be ignored completely.

The rationale is that LOOKUP_IN_ROOT must necessarily chroot-scope
symlinks with absolute paths to dirfd, and so doing it for the base path
seems to be the most consistent behaviour (and also avoids foot-gunning
users who want to scope paths that are absolute).

[1]: https://github.com/cyphar/filepath-securejoin

Signed-off-by: Aleksa Sarai <cyphar@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
fs/namei.c | 5 +++++
include/linux/namei.h | 3 ++-
2 files changed, 7 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/fs/namei.c b/fs/namei.c
index b80efc0ae0f3..efed62c6136e 100644
--- a/fs/namei.c
+++ b/fs/namei.c
@@ -2274,6 +2274,11 @@ static const char *path_init(struct nameidata *nd, unsigned flags)

nd->m_seq = read_seqbegin(&mount_lock);

+ /* LOOKUP_IN_ROOT treats absolute paths as being relative-to-dirfd. */
+ if (flags & LOOKUP_IN_ROOT)
+ while (*s == '/')
+ s++;
+
/* Figure out the starting path and root (if needed). */
if (*s == '/') {
error = nd_jump_root(nd);
diff --git a/include/linux/namei.h b/include/linux/namei.h
index 88b610ca4d83..1ace31052237 100644
--- a/include/linux/namei.h
+++ b/include/linux/namei.h
@@ -48,8 +48,9 @@ enum {LAST_NORM, LAST_ROOT, LAST_DOT, LAST_DOTDOT, LAST_BIND};
#define LOOKUP_NO_MAGICLINKS 0x080000 /* No /proc/$pid/fd/ "symlink" crossing. */
#define LOOKUP_NO_SYMLINKS 0x100000 /* No symlink crossing *at all*.
Implies LOOKUP_NO_MAGICLINKS. */
+#define LOOKUP_IN_ROOT 0x200000 /* Treat dirfd as %current->fs->root. */
/* LOOKUP_* flags which do scope-related checks based on the dirfd. */
-#define LOOKUP_DIRFD_SCOPE_FLAGS LOOKUP_BENEATH
+#define LOOKUP_DIRFD_SCOPE_FLAGS (LOOKUP_BENEATH | LOOKUP_IN_ROOT)

extern int path_pts(struct path *path);

--
2.23.0