Hi, As-is, this could probably live in Documentation/security/no-new-privs.txt (maybe with some examples added). As for a manpage section, I think Michael Kerrisk would happily add a section for PR_[SG]ET_NO_NEW_PRIVS to prctl if this could be summarized into a paragraph or two. (And this reminds me I should send an update for the seccomp section in the prctl manpage too.) -Kees On Tue, Jun 5, 2012 at 10:04 AM, Andy Lutomirski <luto@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hi all- > > As promised (although belatedly), I wrote up some proposed documentation > for the no_new_privs feature. What should I do with it? I don't speak > groff/troff/whatever man pages are written in. > > I would be happy to license this text appropriately for whatever tree > it might end up in. In the mean time, it's GPLv2+. > > --- cut here --- > > The execve system call can grant a newly-started program privileges > that its parent did not have. The most obvious examples are > setuid/setgid programs and file capabilities. To prevent the parent > program from gaining these privileges as well, the kernel and user > code must be careful to prevent the parent from doing anything that > could subvert the child. For example: > > - The dynamic loader handles LD_* environment variables differently > if a program is setuid. > - chroot is disallowed to unprivileged processes, since it would > allow /etc/passwd to be replaced from the point of view of a process > that inherited chroot. > - The exec code has special handling for ptrace. > > These are all ad-hoc fixes. The no_new_privs bit (since Linux 3.5) is > a new, generic mechanism to make it safe for a process to modify its > execution environment in a manner that persists across execve. Any > task can set no_new_privs. Once the bit is set, it is inherited > across fork, clone, and execve and cannot be unset. With no_new_privs > set, execve promises not to grant the privilege to do anything that > could not have been done without the execve call. For example, the > setuid and setgid bits will no longer change the uid or gid; file > capabilities will not add to the permitted set, and LSMs will not > relax constraints after execve. > > Note that no_new_privs does not prevent privilege changes that do not > involve execve. An appropriately privileged task can still call > setuid(2) and receive SCM_RIGHTS datagrams. > > There are two main use cases for no_new_privs so far: > > - Filters installed for the seccomp mode 2 sandbox persist across > execve and can change the behavior of newly-executed programs. > Unprivileged users are therefore only allowed to install such filters > if no_new_privs is set. > > - By itself, no_new_privs can be used to reduce the attack surface > available to an unprivileged user. If everything running with a given > uid has no_new_privs set, then that uid will be unable to escalate its > privileges by directly attacking setuid, setgid, and fcap-using > binaries; it will need to compromise something without the > no_new_privs bit set first. > > In the future, other potentially dangerous kernel features could > become available to unprivileged tasks if no_new_privs is set. In > principle, several options to unshare(2) and clone(2) would be safe > when no_new_privs is set, and no_new_privs + chroot is considerable > less dangerous than chroot by itself. > > --- cut here --- > > --Andy -- Kees Cook Chrome OS Security -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-doc" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
