DT is correct, this change is subject to the EPEL incompatible change
policy. apptainer-suid-1.1.8 by default disables mounting of ext3
filesystems, because of CVE-2023-30549
https://github.com/apptainer/apptainer/security/advisories/GHSA-j4rf-7357-f4cg
Most users don't use this feature, but a significant minority does.
Apptainer has a non-setuid alternative for the same functionality if
unprivileged user namespaces are available.
The summary of the CVE is that the way that apptainer & singularity
allow mounts of ext3 filesystems in setuid mode raises the severity of
many ext4 filesystem CVEs (ext3 filesystems are implemented by the ext4
driver). OS vendors consider those CVEs to be low or moderate priority
because they assume that users do not have write access to the
underlying bits of the filesystem, but apptainer/singularity setuid mode
gives that access to users by default (before this release of apptainer).
Since vendors don't see urgency to patch low/moderate CVEs, it can take
a very long time for them to patch them and in fact RHEL7 is not patched
for one in particular. All this information came from a reliable source,
the owner of the ext4 kernel driver.
I am sorry to see that I have already done one step too many according
to the incompatible changes policy, and have made the release available
to epel-testing. However, I think it's important to make it available
that way for system administrators to install early. The large High
Energy Physics community that I represent has security teams that want
to be able to notify their site administrators to upgrade to respond to
this high severity CVE, and it would be so much better if the
announcement they send can say to install from epel-testing rather than
having to provide URLs to download from koji.
So, to the EPEL Steering Committee members: must I unpublish this update
from testing, or may I leave it there and send an announcement to
epel-announce that it is there and pending approval by the committee?
The bodhi settings are set so they won't get auto-updated by karma or
time.
And another question: should I submit an epel ticket for this? The
policy doesn't mention that.
Dave
On Wed, Apr 26, 2023 at 09:41:16AM +0100, David Trudgian wrote:
> Subject: Re: apptainer 1.1.8-1 appears to be an incompatible upgrade for apptainer-suid users
>
> Hello,
>
> The maintainer of the apptainer package has submitted updates to version 1.1.8-1 against epel-testing:
>
> https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-EPEL-2023-18a0e3fa23
> https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-EPEL-2023-44ff2475c4
> https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-EPEL-2023-b31211e2ce
>
> I believe that the update should be considered an incompatible upgrade, requiring the incompatible upgrades policy to be followed, as it significantly changes behaviour for users who have the apptainer-setuid sub-package installed.
>
> The update now disallows, by default, workflows that involve ext format container images and overlays:
>
> ```
> # Before update
> $ apptainer exec sif-overlay.sif /bin/date
> Wed Apr 26 09:12:37 BST 2023
>
> # Update to the testing package
> $ sudo dnf update --enablerepo=epel-testing apptainer-suid
>
> # After update
> $ apptainer exec sif-overlay.sif /bin/date
> FATAL: configuration disallows users from mounting SIF extfs partition in setuid mode, try --userns
> ```
>
> I understand that the update is related to a security issue that upstream has published:
>
> CVE-2023-30549 - https://github.com/apptainer/apptainer/security/advisories/GHSA-j4rf-7357-f4cg
>
> However, I don't think this exempts the update from the incompatible upgrades policy?
>
> I'd also like to note that CVE-2023-30549 is dependent on and potentially a duplicate of CVE-2022-1184, which has been patched in EL8 and EL9, but admittedly not in EL7.
>
> Thanks,
>
> DT
>
>
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