Potentially undesirable interactions between vfork() and time namespaces

[Alexey Izbyshev]

Hi,

I've looked at Andrei's patch[1] that permitted vfork() after 
unshare(CLONE_NEWTIME) and noticed a couple of odd things that I'd like 
to point out.

 	/*
 	 * If the new process will be in a different time namespace
 	 * do not allow it to share VM or a thread group with the forking 
task.
+	 *
+	 * On vfork, the child process enters the target time namespace only
+	 * after exec.
 	 */
-	if (clone_flags & (CLONE_THREAD | CLONE_VM)) {
+	if ((clone_flags & (CLONE_VM | CLONE_VFORK)) == CLONE_VM) {
 		if (nsp->time_ns != nsp->time_ns_for_children)
 			return ERR_PTR(-EINVAL);
 	}

This change permits not only a normal vfork(), but also 
clone(CLONE_VM|CLONE_VFORK|CLONE_SIGHAND|CLONE_THREAD). I'm not sure 
whether it can cause real harm, but it's pretty inconsistent to forbid 
creation of normal threads after unshare(CLONE_NEWTIME), but permit such 
weird ones, so maybe the check should be strengthened.

Also, if such a thread execs, no time namespace switch will happen 
because it's vfork_done field will be cleared when its creator (a 
sibling thread) is killed by de_thread().

+       vfork = !!tsk->vfork_done;
        old_mm = current->mm;
        exec_mm_release(tsk, old_mm);
        if (old_mm)
@@ -1030,6 +1033,10 @@ static int exec_mmap(struct mm_struct *mm)
        tsk->mm->vmacache_seqnum = 0;
        vmacache_flush(tsk);
        task_unlock(tsk);
+
+       if (vfork)
+               timens_on_fork(tsk->nsproxy, tsk);
+

Similarly, even after a normal vfork(), time namespace switch could be 
silently skipped if the parent dies before "tsk->vfork_done" is read. 
Again, I don't know whether anybody cares, but this behavior seems 
non-obvious and probably unintended to me.

Thanks,
Alexey

[1] 
https://lore.kernel.org/all/20220613060723.197407-1-avagin@xxxxxxxxx/