[PATCH] selinux: Use task_alloc hook rather than task_create hook

Tetsuo Handa penguin-kernel at I-love.SAKURA.ne.jp
Tue Mar 28 14:08:45 UTC 2017


Stephen Smalley wrote:
> On Tue, 2017-03-28 at 22:12 +0900, Tetsuo Handa wrote:
> > This patch is a preparation for getting rid of task_create hook
> > because
> > task_create hook
> 
> task_alloc hook?

Oops, copy&paste error. Yes, I meant task_alloc hook.

> 
> >  which can do what task_create hook can do was revived.
> > 
> > Creating a new thread is unlikely prohibited by security policy, for
> > fork()/execve()/exit() is fundamental of how processes are managed in
> > Unix. If a program is known to create a new thread, it is likely that
> > permission to create a new thread is given to that program.
> > Therefore,
> > a situation where security_task_create() returns an error is likely
> > that
> > the program was exploited and lost control. Even if SELinux failed to
> > check permission to create a thread at security_task_create(),
> > SELinux
> > can later check it at security_task_alloc(). Since the new thread is
> > not
> > yet visible from the rest of the system, nobody can do bad things
> > using
> > the new thread. What we waste will be limited to some initialization
> > steps such as dup_task_struct(), copy_creds() and audit_alloc() in
> > copy_process(). We can tolerate these overhead for unlikely
> > situation.
> > 
> > Therefore, this patch changes SELinux to use task_alloc hook rather
> > than
> > task_create hook so that we can remove task_create hook.
> 
> Aside from the nit on the patch description above,
> 
> Acked-by: Stephen Smalley <sds at tycho.nsa.gov>

Thank you.

>From b43bd0fc0cc267b91f51ad118f6fabd13efb921e Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Tetsuo Handa <penguin-kernel at I-love.SAKURA.ne.jp>
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2017 22:09:38 +0900
Subject: [PATCH v2] selinux: Use task_alloc hook rather than task_create hook

This patch is a preparation for getting rid of task_create hook because
task_alloc hook which can do what task_create hook can do was revived.

Creating a new thread is unlikely prohibited by security policy, for
fork()/execve()/exit() is fundamental of how processes are managed in
Unix. If a program is known to create a new thread, it is likely that
permission to create a new thread is given to that program. Therefore,
a situation where security_task_create() returns an error is likely that
the program was exploited and lost control. Even if SELinux failed to
check permission to create a thread at security_task_create(), SELinux
can later check it at security_task_alloc(). Since the new thread is not
yet visible from the rest of the system, nobody can do bad things using
the new thread. What we waste will be limited to some initialization
steps such as dup_task_struct(), copy_creds() and audit_alloc() in
copy_process(). We can tolerate these overhead for unlikely situation.

Therefore, this patch changes SELinux to use task_alloc hook rather than
task_create hook so that we can remove task_create hook.

Signed-off-by: Tetsuo Handa <penguin-kernel at I-love.SAKURA.ne.jp>
Acked-by: Stephen Smalley <sds at tycho.nsa.gov>
---
 security/selinux/hooks.c | 5 +++--
 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/security/selinux/hooks.c b/security/selinux/hooks.c
index d37a723..d850b7f 100644
--- a/security/selinux/hooks.c
+++ b/security/selinux/hooks.c
@@ -3710,7 +3710,8 @@ static int selinux_file_open(struct file *file, const struct cred *cred)
 
 /* task security operations */
 
-static int selinux_task_create(unsigned long clone_flags)
+static int selinux_task_alloc(struct task_struct *task,
+			      unsigned long clone_flags)
 {
 	u32 sid = current_sid();
 
@@ -6205,7 +6206,7 @@ static int selinux_key_getsecurity(struct key *key, char **_buffer)
 
 	LSM_HOOK_INIT(file_open, selinux_file_open),
 
-	LSM_HOOK_INIT(task_create, selinux_task_create),
+	LSM_HOOK_INIT(task_alloc, selinux_task_alloc),
 	LSM_HOOK_INIT(cred_alloc_blank, selinux_cred_alloc_blank),
 	LSM_HOOK_INIT(cred_free, selinux_cred_free),
 	LSM_HOOK_INIT(cred_prepare, selinux_cred_prepare),
-- 
1.8.3.1
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