[PATCH v4 3/3] prctl: Allow ptrace capable processes to change /proc/self/exe

[Christian Brauner]

On Mon, Jul 06, 2020 at 05:13:35PM +0000, Nicolas Viennot wrote:
> > > This is scary.  But I believe it is safe.
> > >
> > > Reviewed-by: Serge Hallyn <serge at hallyn.com>
> > >
> > > I am a bit curious about the implications of the selinux patch.
> > > IIUC you are using the permission of the tracing process to execute
> > > the file without transition, so this is a way to work around the
> > > policy which might prevent the tracee from doing so.
> > > Given that SELinux wants to be MAC, I'm not *quite* sure that's
> > > considered kosher.  You also are skipping the PROCESS__PTRACE to
> > > SECCLASS_PROCESS check which selinux_bprm_set_creds does later on.
> > > Again I'm just not quite sure what's considered normal there these
> > > days.
> > >
> > > Paul, do you have input there?
> >
> > I agree, the SELinux hook looks wrong.  Building on what Christian said, this looks more like a ptrace operation than an exec operation.
> 
> Serge, Paul, Christian,
> 
> I made a PoC to demonstrate the change of /proc/self/exe without CAP_SYS_ADMIN using only ptrace and execve.
> You may find it here: https://github.com/nviennot/run_as_exe
> 
> What do you recommend to relax the security checks in the kernel when it comes to changing the exe link?

Looks fun! Yeah, so that this is possible is known afaict. But you're
not really circumventing the kernel check but are mucking with the EFL
by changing the auxv, right?

Originally, you needed to be userns root, i.e. only uid 0 could
change the /proc/self/exe link (cf. [1]). This was changed to
ns_capable(CAP_SYS_ADMIN) in [2].

The original reasoning in [1] is interesting as it basically already
points to your poc:

"Still note that updating exe-file link now doesn't require sys-resource
 capability anymore, after all there is no much profit in preventing
 setup own file link (there are a number of ways to execute own code --
 ptrace, ld-preload, so that the only reliable way to find which exactly
 code is executed is to inspect running program memory).  Still we
 require the caller to be at least user-namespace root user."

There were arguments being made that /proc/<pid>/exe needs to be sm that
userspace can have a decent amount of trust in but I believe that that's
not a great argument.

But let me dig a little into the original discussion and see what the
thread-model was.
At this point I'm starting to believe that it was people being cautios
but better be sure.

[1]: f606b77f1a9e ("prctl: PR_SET_MM -- introduce PR_SET_MM_MAP operation")
[2]: 4d28df6152aa ("prctl: Allow local CAP_SYS_ADMIN changing exe_file")
[3]: https://lore.kernel.org/patchwork/patch/697304/

Christian