On Tue, 2017-10-17 at 07:59 -0700, Casey Schaufler wrote:

On 10/17/2017 5:31 AM, Simo Sorce wrote:

quoted

On Mon, 2017-10-16 at 21:42 -0400, Steve Grubb wrote:

quoted

On Monday, October 16, 2017 8:33:40 PM EDT Richard Guy Briggs
wrote:

quoted

There is such a thing, but the kernel doesn't know about it
yet.  This same situation exists for loginuid and sessionid
which
are userspace concepts that the kernel tracks for the
convenience
of userspace.  As for its name, I'm not particularly picky, so
if
you don't like CAP_CONTAINER_* then I'm fine with
CAP_AUDIT_CONTAINERID.  It really needs to be distinct from
CAP_AUDIT_WRITE and CAP_AUDIT_CONTROL since we don't want to
give
the ability to set a containerID to any process that is able to
do
audit logging (such as vsftpd) and similarly we don't want to
give
the orchestrator the ability to control the setup of the audit
daemon.

A long time ago, we were debating what should guard against rouge
processes from setting the loginuid. Casey argued that the
ability to
set the loginuid means they have the ability to control the audit
trail. That means that it should be guarded by CAP_AUDIT_CONTROL.
I
think the same logic applies today. 

The difference is that with loginuid you needed to give processes
able
to audit also the ability to change it. You do not want to tie the
ability to change container ids to the ability to audit. You want
to be
able to do audit stuff (within the container) without allowing it
to
change the container id.

Without a *kernel* policy on containerIDs you can't say what
security policy is being exempted.

The policy has been basically stated earlier.

A way to track a set of processes from a specific point in time
forward. The name used is "container id", but it could be anything.
This marker is mostly used by user space to track process hierarchies
without races, these processes can be very privileged, and must not be
allowed to change the marker themselves when granted the current common
capabilities.

Is this a good enough description ? If not can you clarify your
expectations ?

 Without that you can't say what capability is (or isn't)
appropriate.

See if the above is sufficient please.

You need a reason to have a capability check that makes sense in the
context of the kernel security policy.

I think the proposal had a reason, we may debate on whether that reason
is good enough.

Since we don't know what a container is in the kernel,

Please do not fixate on the word container.

 that's pretty hard. We don't create "fuzzy" capabilities
based on the trendy application behavior of the moment. If the
behavior is not related it audit, there's no reason for it, and
if it is, CAP_AUDIT_CONTROL works just fine. If this doesn't work
in your application security model I suggest that is where you
need to make changes.

The authors of the proposal came to the conclusion that kernel
assistance is needed. It would be nice to discuss the merits of it.
If you do not understand why the request has been made it would be more
useful to ask specific questions to understand what and why is the ask.

Pushing back is fine, if you have understood the problem and have valid
arguments against a kernel level solution (and possibly suggestions for
a working user space solution), otherwise you are not adding value to
the discussion. 

Simo.

-- 
Simo Sorce
Sr. Principal Software Engineer
Red Hat, Inc

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