On Thu, Sep 27, 2018 at 8:33 AM, Jann Horn <jannh@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Restrict the ability to inspect kernel stacks of arbitrary tasks to root
> in order to prevent a local attacker from exploiting racy stack unwinding
> to leak kernel task stack contents.
> See the added comment for a longer rationale.
>
> There don't seem to be any users of this userspace API that can't
> gracefully bail out if reading from the file fails. Therefore, I believe
> that this change is unlikely to break things.
> In the case that this patch does end up needing a revert, the next-best
> solution might be to fake a single-entry stack based on wchan.
>
> Fixes: 2ec220e27f50 ("proc: add /proc/*/stack")
> Cc: stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Signed-off-by: Jann Horn <jannh@xxxxxxxxxx>
Acked-by: Kees Cook <keescook@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
-Kees
> ---
> Resending because I forgot to send this to akpm the first time.
>
> fs/proc/base.c | 14 ++++++++++++++
> 1 file changed, 14 insertions(+)
>
> diff --git a/fs/proc/base.c b/fs/proc/base.c
> index ccf86f16d9f0..7e9f07bf260d 100644
> --- a/fs/proc/base.c
> +++ b/fs/proc/base.c
> @@ -407,6 +407,20 @@ static int proc_pid_stack(struct seq_file *m, struct pid_namespace *ns,
> unsigned long *entries;
> int err;
>
> + /*
> + * The ability to racily run the kernel stack unwinder on a running task
> + * and then observe the unwinder output is scary; while it is useful for
> + * debugging kernel issues, it can also allow an attacker to leak kernel
> + * stack contents.
> + * Doing this in a manner that is at least safe from races would require
> + * some work to ensure that the remote task can not be scheduled; and
> + * even then, this would still expose the unwinder as local attack
> + * surface.
> + * Therefore, this interface is restricted to root.
> + */
> + if (!file_ns_capable(m->file, &init_user_ns, CAP_SYS_ADMIN))
> + return -EACCES;
> +
> entries = kmalloc_array(MAX_STACK_TRACE_DEPTH, sizeof(*entries),
> GFP_KERNEL);
> if (!entries)
> --
> 2.19.0.rc2.392.g5ba43deb5a-goog
>
--
Kees Cook
Pixel Security
