Thread (5 messages) 5 messages, 2 authors, 2020-06-18

Re: [PATCH v3 3/3] prctl: Allow ptrace capable processes to change exe_fd

From: Jann Horn <jannh@google.com>
Date: 2020-06-18 14:11:51
Also in: linux-fsdevel, lkml, selinux

On Thu, Jun 18, 2020 at 3:50 PM Adrian Reber [off-list ref] wrote:
The current process is authorized to change its /proc/self/exe link via
two policies:
1) The current user can do checkpoint/restore In other words is
   CAP_SYS_ADMIN or CAP_CHECKPOINT_RESTORE capable.
2) The current user can use ptrace.

With access to ptrace facilities, a process can do the following: fork a
child, execve() the target executable, and have the child use ptrace()
to replace the memory content of the current process. This technique
makes it possible to masquerade an arbitrary program as any executable,
even setuid ones.

This commit also changes the permission error code from -EINVAL to
-EPERM for consistency with the rest of the prctl() syscall when
checking capabilities.
[...]
quoted hunk ↗ jump to hunk
diff --git a/kernel/sys.c b/kernel/sys.c
[...]
quoted hunk ↗ jump to hunk
@@ -2007,12 +2007,23 @@ static int prctl_set_mm_map(int opt, const void __user *addr, unsigned long data

        if (prctl_map.exe_fd != (u32)-1) {
                /*
-                * Make sure the caller has the rights to
-                * change /proc/pid/exe link: only local sys admin should
-                * be allowed to.
+                * The current process is authorized to change its
+                * /proc/self/exe link via two policies:
+                * 1) The current user can do checkpoint/restore
+                *    In other words is CAP_SYS_ADMIN or
+                *    CAP_CHECKPOINT_RESTORE capable.
+                * 2) The current user can use ptrace.
+                *
+                * With access to ptrace facilities, a process can do the
+                * following: fork a child, execve() the target executable,
+                * and have the child use ptrace() to replace the memory
+                * content of the current process. This technique makes it
+                * possible to masquerade an arbitrary program as the target
+                * executable, even if it is setuid.
(That is not necessarily true in the presence of LSMs like SELinux:
You'd have to be able to FILE__EXECUTE_NO_TRANS the target executable
according to the system's security policy.)
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