Re: [PATCH 3/7] Add a UFFD_SECURE flag to the userfaultfd API.

From: Cyrill Gorcunov
Date: Wed Oct 23 2019 - 03:29:28 EST


On Tue, Oct 22, 2019 at 09:11:04PM -0700, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
> Trying again. It looks like I used the wrong address for Pavel.

Thanks for CC Andy! I must confess I didn't dive into userfaultfd engine
personally but let me CC more people involved from criu side. (overquoting
left untouched for their sake).

>
> On Sat, Oct 12, 2019 at 6:14 PM Andy Lutomirski <luto@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > [adding more people because this is going to be an ABI break, sigh]
> >
> > On Sat, Oct 12, 2019 at 5:52 PM Daniel Colascione <dancol@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > >
> > > On Sat, Oct 12, 2019 at 4:10 PM Andy Lutomirski <luto@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > On Sat, Oct 12, 2019 at 12:16 PM Daniel Colascione <dancol@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > The new secure flag makes userfaultfd use a new "secure" anonymous
> > > > > file object instead of the default one, letting security modules
> > > > > supervise userfaultfd use.
> > > > >
> > > > > Requiring that users pass a new flag lets us avoid changing the
> > > > > semantics for existing callers.
> > > >
> > > > Is there any good reason not to make this be the default?
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > The only downside I can see is that it would increase the memory usage
> > > > of userfaultfd(), but that doesn't seem like such a big deal. A
> > > > lighter-weight alternative would be to have a single inode shared by
> > > > all userfaultfd instances, which would require a somewhat different
> > > > internal anon_inode API.
> > >
> > > I'd also prefer to just make SELinux use mandatory, but there's a
> > > nasty interaction with UFFD_EVENT_FORK. Adding a new UFFD_SECURE mode
> > > which blocks UFFD_EVENT_FORK sidesteps this problem. Maybe you know a
> > > better way to deal with it.
> >
> > ...
> >
> > > But maybe we can go further: let's separate authentication and
> > > authorization, as we do in other LSM hooks. Let's split my
> > > inode_init_security_anon into two hooks, inode_init_security_anon and
> > > inode_create_anon. We'd define the former to just initialize the file
> > > object's security information --- in the SELinux case, figuring out
> > > its class and SID --- and define the latter to answer the yes/no
> > > question of whether a particular anonymous inode creation should be
> > > allowed. Normally, anon_inode_getfile2() would just call both hooks.
> > > We'd add another anon_inode_getfd flag, ANON_INODE_SKIP_AUTHORIZATION
> > > or something, that would tell anon_inode_getfile2() to skip calling
> > > the authorization hook, effectively making the creation always
> > > succeed. We can then make the UFFD code pass
> > > ANON_INODE_SKIP_AUTHORIZATION when it's creating a file object in the
> > > fork child while creating UFFD_EVENT_FORK messages.
> >
> > That sounds like an improvement. Or maybe just teach SELinux that
> > this particular fd creation is actually making an anon_inode that is a
> > child of an existing anon inode and that the context should be copied
> > or whatever SELinux wants to do. Like this, maybe:
> >
> > static int resolve_userfault_fork(struct userfaultfd_ctx *ctx,
> > struct userfaultfd_ctx *new,
> > struct uffd_msg *msg)
> > {
> > int fd;
> >
> > Change this:
> >
> > fd = anon_inode_getfd("[userfaultfd]", &userfaultfd_fops, new,
> > O_RDWR | (new->flags & UFFD_SHARED_FCNTL_FLAGS));
> >
> > to something like:
> >
> > fd = anon_inode_make_child_fd(..., ctx->inode, ...);
> >
> > where ctx->inode is the one context's inode.
> >
> > *** HOWEVER *** !!!
> >
> > Now that you've pointed this mechanism out, it is utterly and
> > completely broken and should be removed from the kernel outright or at
> > least severely restricted. A .read implementation MUST NOT ACT ON THE
> > CALLING TASK. Ever. Just imagine the effect of passing a userfaultfd
> > as stdin to a setuid program.
> >
> > So I think the right solution might be to attempt to *remove*
> > UFFD_EVENT_FORK. Maybe the solution is to say that, unless the
> > creator of a userfaultfd() has global CAP_SYS_ADMIN, then it cannot
> > use UFFD_FEATURE_EVENT_FORK) and print a warning (once) when
> > UFFD_FEATURE_EVENT_FORK is allowed. And, after some suitable
> > deprecation period, just remove it. If it's genuinely useful, it
> > needs an entirely new API based on ioctl() or a syscall. Or even
> > recvmsg() :)
> >
> > And UFFD_SECURE should just become automatic, since you don't have a
> > problem any more. :-p
> >
> > --Andy
>

Cyrill