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Christian Brauner 620c266f39 fhandle: relax open_by_handle_at() permission checks
A current limitation of open_by_handle_at() is that it's currently not possible
to use it from within containers at all because we require CAP_DAC_READ_SEARCH
in the initial namespace. That's unfortunate because there are scenarios where
using open_by_handle_at() from within containers.

Two examples:

(1) cgroupfs allows to encode cgroups to file handles and reopen them with
    open_by_handle_at().
(2) Fanotify allows placing filesystem watches they currently aren't usable in
    containers because the returned file handles cannot be used.

Here's a proposal for relaxing the permission check for open_by_handle_at().

(1) Opening file handles when the caller has privileges over the filesystem
    (1.1) The caller has an unobstructed view of the filesystem.
    (1.2) The caller has permissions to follow a path to the file handle.

This doesn't address the problem of opening a file handle when only a portion
of a filesystem is exposed as is common in containers by e.g., bind-mounting a
subtree. The proposal to solve this use-case is:

(2) Opening file handles when the caller has privileges over a subtree
    (2.1) The caller is able to reach the file from the provided mount fd.
    (2.2) The caller has permissions to construct an unobstructed path to the
          file handle.
    (2.3) The caller has permissions to follow a path to the file handle.

The relaxed permission checks are currently restricted to directory file
handles which are what both cgroupfs and fanotify need. Handling disconnected
non-directory file handles would lead to a potentially non-deterministic api.
If a disconnected non-directory file handle is provided we may fail to decode
a valid path that we could use for permission checking. That in itself isn't a
problem as we would just return EACCES in that case. However, confusion may
arise if a non-disconnected dentry ends up in the cache later and those opening
the file handle would suddenly succeed.

* It's potentially possible to use timing information (side-channel) to infer
  whether a given inode exists. I don't think that's particularly
  problematic. Thanks to Jann for bringing this to my attention.

* An unrelated note (IOW, these are thoughts that apply to
  open_by_handle_at() generically and are unrelated to the changes here):
  Jann pointed out that we should verify whether deleted files could
  potentially be reopened through open_by_handle_at(). I don't think that's
  possible though.

  Another potential thing to check is whether open_by_handle_at() could be
  abused to open internal stuff like memfds or gpu stuff. I don't think so
  but I haven't had the time to completely verify this.

This dates back to discussions Amir and I had quite some time ago and thanks to
him for providing a lot of details around the export code and related patches!

Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20240524-vfs-open_by_handle_at-v1-1-3d4b7d22736b@kernel.org
Reviewed-by: Amir Goldstein <amir73il@gmail.com>
Reviewed-by: Jeff Layton <jlayton@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner <brauner@kernel.org>
2024-05-28 15:57:23 +02:00
arch 16 hotfixes, 11 of which are cc:stable. 2024-05-25 15:10:33 -07:00
block block-6.10-20240523 2024-05-23 13:44:47 -07:00
certs kbuild: use $(src) instead of $(srctree)/$(src) for source directory 2024-05-10 04:34:52 +09:00
crypto This push fixes a bug in the new ecc P521 code as well as a buggy 2024-05-20 08:47:54 -07:00
Documentation 16 hotfixes, 11 of which are cc:stable. 2024-05-25 15:10:33 -07:00
drivers ipmi: Mostly updates for deprecated interfaces 2024-05-25 14:32:29 -07:00
fs fhandle: relax open_by_handle_at() permission checks 2024-05-28 15:57:23 +02:00
include fhandle: relax open_by_handle_at() permission checks 2024-05-28 15:57:23 +02:00
init Driver core changes for 6.10-rc1 2024-05-22 12:13:40 -07:00
io_uring io_uring-6.10-20240523 2024-05-23 13:41:49 -07:00
ipc Mainly singleton patches, documented in their respective changelogs. 2024-05-19 14:02:03 -07:00
kernel Misc fixes: 2024-05-25 14:48:40 -07:00
lib 16 hotfixes, 11 of which are cc:stable. 2024-05-25 15:10:33 -07:00
LICENSES LICENSES: Add the copyleft-next-0.3.1 license 2022-11-08 15:44:01 +01:00
mm 16 hotfixes, 11 of which are cc:stable. 2024-05-25 15:10:33 -07:00
net NFS client updates for Linux 6.10 2024-05-23 13:51:09 -07:00
rust LoongArch changes for v6.10 2024-05-22 09:43:07 -07:00
samples tracing/treewide: Remove second parameter of __assign_str() 2024-05-22 20:14:47 -04:00
scripts - A series ("kbuild: enable more warnings by default") from Arnd 2024-05-22 18:59:29 -07:00
security hardening fixes for v6.10-rc1 2024-05-24 08:33:44 -07:00
sound sound fixes for 6.10-rc1 2024-05-24 08:48:51 -07:00
tools Revert a patch causing a regression as described in the cset: 2024-05-26 09:54:26 -07:00
usr kbuild: use $(src) instead of $(srctree)/$(src) for source directory 2024-05-10 04:34:52 +09:00
virt The usual shower of singleton fixes and minor series all over MM, 2024-05-19 09:21:03 -07:00
.clang-format clang-format: Update with v6.7-rc4's for_each macro list 2023-12-08 23:54:38 +01:00
.cocciconfig
.editorconfig Add .editorconfig file for basic formatting 2023-12-28 16:22:47 +09:00
.get_maintainer.ignore Add Jeff Kirsher to .get_maintainer.ignore 2024-03-08 11:36:54 +00:00
.gitattributes .gitattributes: set diff driver for Rust source code files 2023-05-31 17:48:25 +02:00
.gitignore kbuild: create a list of all built DTB files 2024-02-19 18:20:39 +09:00
.mailmap mailmap: update email address for Satya Priya 2024-05-24 11:55:05 -07:00
.rustfmt.toml rust: add .rustfmt.toml 2022-09-28 09:02:20 +02:00
COPYING COPYING: state that all contributions really are covered by this file 2020-02-10 13:32:20 -08:00
CREDITS MAINTAINERS: Drop Gustavo Pimentel as PCI DWC Maintainer 2024-03-27 13:41:02 -05:00
Kbuild Kbuild updates for v6.1 2022-10-10 12:00:45 -07:00
Kconfig kbuild: ensure full rebuild when the compiler is updated 2020-05-12 13:28:33 +09:00
MAINTAINERS RTC for 6.10 2024-05-25 13:33:53 -07:00
Makefile Linux 6.10-rc1 2024-05-26 15:20:12 -07:00
README README: Fix spelling 2024-03-18 03:36:32 -06:00

Linux kernel
============

There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
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In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
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    https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/

There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the reStructuredText markup notation.

Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.