Changes since v1: * move from LSM/Yama to sysctl/fs Signed-off-by: Mickaël Salaün <mic@xxxxxxxxxxx> Reviewed-by: Philippe Trébuchet <philippe.trebuchet@xxxxxxxxxxx> Reviewed-by: Thibaut Sautereau <thibaut.sautereau@xxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@xxxxxxx> Cc: Kees Cook <keescook@xxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Mickaël Salaün <mickael.salaun@xxxxxxxxxxx> --- Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/fs.rst | 43 +++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 43 insertions(+) diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/fs.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/fs.rst index 2a45119e3331..f2f5bbe428d6 100644 --- a/Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/fs.rst +++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/fs.rst @@ -37,6 +37,7 @@ Currently, these files are in /proc/sys/fs: - inode-nr - inode-state - nr_open +- open_mayexec_enforce - overflowuid - overflowgid - pipe-user-pages-hard @@ -165,6 +166,48 @@ system needs to prune the inode list instead of allocating more. +open_mayexec_enforce +-------------------- + +The ``O_MAYEXEC`` flag can be passed to :manpage:`open(2)` to only open regular +files that are expected to be executable. If the file is not identified as +executable, then the syscall returns -EACCES. This may allow a script +interpreter to check executable permission before reading commands from a file. +One interesting use case is to enforce a "write xor execute" policy through +interpreters. + +Thanks to this flag, it is possible to enforce the ``noexec`` mount option +(i.e. the underlying mount point of the file is mounted with MNT_NOEXEC or its +underlying superblock is SB_I_NOEXEC) not only on ELF binaries but also on +scripts. This may be possible thanks to script interpreters using the +``O_MAYEXEC`` flag. The executable permission is then checked before reading +commands from a file, and thus can enforce the ``noexec`` at the interpreter +level by propagating this security policy to the scripts. To be fully +effective, these interpreters also need to handle the other ways to execute +code (for which the kernel can't help): command line parameters (e.g., option +``-e`` for Perl), module loading (e.g., option ``-m`` for Python), stdin, file +sourcing, environment variables, configuration files... According to the +threat model, it may be acceptable to allow some script interpreters (e.g. +Bash) to interpret commands from stdin, may it be a TTY or a pipe, because it +may not be enough to (directly) perform syscalls. + +There is two complementary security policies: enforce the ``noexec`` mount +option, or enforce executable file permission. These policies are handled by +the ``fs.open_mayexec_enforce`` sysctl (writable only with ``CAP_MAC_ADMIN``) +as a bitmask: + +1 - mount restriction: + check that the mount options for the underlying VFS mount do not prevent + execution. + +2 - file permission restriction: + check that the to-be-opened file is marked as executable for the current + process (e.g., POSIX permissions). + +Code samples can be found in tools/testing/selftests/exec/omayexec.c and +https://github.com/clipos-archive/clipos4_portage-overlay/search?q=O_MAYEXEC . + + overflowgid & overflowuid ------------------------- -- 2.23.0
