On Fri, Apr 24, 2020 at 11:51 PM Paul Moore <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On Fri, Apr 24, 2020 at 4:27 AM Dmitry Vyukov <dvyukov@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Hi SELinux maintainers, > > > > We've hit a case where a developer wasn't able to reproduce a kernel > > bug, it turned out to be a difference in behavior between SELinux and > > non-SELinux kernels. > > Condensed version: a program does sendmmsg on netlink socket with 2 > > mmsghdr's, first is completely empty/zeros, second contains some > > actual payload. Without SELinux the first mmsghdr is treated as no-op > > and the kernel processes the second one (triggers bug). However the > > SELinux hook does: > > > > static int selinux_netlink_send(struct sock *sk, struct sk_buff *skb) > > { > > if (skb->len < NLMSG_HDRLEN) { > > err = -EINVAL; > > goto out; > > } > > > > and fails processing on the first empty mmsghdr (does not happen > > without SELinux). > > > > Is this difference in behavior intentional/acceptable/should be fixed? > > From a practical perspective, SELinux is always going to need to do a > length check as it needs to peek into the netlink message header for > the message type so it can map that to the associated SELinux > permissions. So in that sense, the behavior is intentional and > desired; however from a bug-for-bug compatibility perspective ... not > so much. > > Ultimately, my it's-Friday-and-it's-been-a-long-week-ending-in-a-long-day > thought is that this was a buggy operation to begin with and the bug > was just caught in different parts of the kernel, depending on how it > was configured. It may not be ideal, but I can think of worse things > (and arguably SELinux is doing the Right Thing). +netlink maintainers for intended semantics of empty netlink messages If it's a bug, or intended behavior depends on the intended behavior... which I assume is not documented anywhere officially. However, most of the netlink families use netlink_rcv_skb, which does: int netlink_rcv_skb(struct sk_buff *skb, int (*cb)(struct sk_buff *, struct nlmsghdr *, struct netlink_ext_ack *)) { ... while (skb->len >= nlmsg_total_size(0)) { ... skb_pull(skb, msglen); } return 0; } 1. How intentional is this while loop logic vs sloppy error checking? 2. netlink_rcv_skb seems to be able to handle 2+ messages in the same skb, while selinux_netlink_send only checks the first one... so can I skip SELinux checks by putting a malicious message after a permitted one?..