[PATCH v3 3/3] prctl: Allow ptrace capable processes to change exe_fd

[Jann Horn]

On Thu, Jun 18, 2020 at 3:50 PM Adrian Reber <areber at redhat.com> wrote:
> The current process is authorized to change its /proc/self/exe link via
> two policies:
> 1) The current user can do checkpoint/restore In other words is
>    CAP_SYS_ADMIN or CAP_CHECKPOINT_RESTORE capable.
> 2) The current user can use ptrace.
>
> With access to ptrace facilities, a process can do the following: fork a
> child, execve() the target executable, and have the child use ptrace()
> to replace the memory content of the current process. This technique
> makes it possible to masquerade an arbitrary program as any executable,
> even setuid ones.
>
> This commit also changes the permission error code from -EINVAL to
> -EPERM for consistency with the rest of the prctl() syscall when
> checking capabilities.
[...]
> diff --git a/kernel/sys.c b/kernel/sys.c
[...]
> @@ -2007,12 +2007,23 @@ static int prctl_set_mm_map(int opt, const void __user *addr, unsigned long data
>
>         if (prctl_map.exe_fd != (u32)-1) {
>                 /*
> -                * Make sure the caller has the rights to
> -                * change /proc/pid/exe link: only local sys admin should
> -                * be allowed to.
> +                * The current process is authorized to change its
> +                * /proc/self/exe link via two policies:
> +                * 1) The current user can do checkpoint/restore
> +                *    In other words is CAP_SYS_ADMIN or
> +                *    CAP_CHECKPOINT_RESTORE capable.
> +                * 2) The current user can use ptrace.
> +                *
> +                * With access to ptrace facilities, a process can do the
> +                * following: fork a child, execve() the target executable,
> +                * and have the child use ptrace() to replace the memory
> +                * content of the current process. This technique makes it
> +                * possible to masquerade an arbitrary program as the target
> +                * executable, even if it is setuid.

(That is not necessarily true in the presence of LSMs like SELinux:
You'd have to be able to FILE__EXECUTE_NO_TRANS the target executable
according to the system's security policy.)