Fw: [PATCH] proc: Update inode upon changing task security attribute

[Casey Schaufler]

On 12/9/2023 10:08 AM, Paul Moore wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 8, 2023 at 7:24 PM Casey Schaufler <casey at schaufler-ca.com> wrote:
>> On 12/8/2023 3:32 PM, Paul Moore wrote:
>>> On Fri, Dec 8, 2023 at 6:21 PM Casey Schaufler <casey at schaufler-ca.com> wrote:
>>>> On 12/8/2023 2:43 PM, Paul Moore wrote:
>>>>> On Thu, Dec 7, 2023 at 9:14 PM Munehisa Kamata <kamatam at amazon.com> wrote:
>>>>>> On Tue, 2023-12-05 14:21:51 -0800, Paul Moore wrote:
>>>>> ..
>>>>>
>>>>>>> I think my thoughts are neatly summarized by Andrew's "yuk!" comment
>>>>>>> at the top.  However, before we go too much further on this, can we
>>>>>>> get clarification that Casey was able to reproduce this on a stock
>>>>>>> upstream kernel?  Last I read in the other thread Casey wasn't seeing
>>>>>>> this problem on Linux v6.5.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> However, for the moment I'm going to assume this is a real problem, is
>>>>>>> there some reason why the existing pid_revalidate() code is not being
>>>>>>> called in the bind mount case?  From what I can see in the original
>>>>>>> problem report, the path walk seems to work okay when the file is
>>>>>>> accessed directly from /proc, but fails when done on the bind mount.
>>>>>>> Is there some problem with revalidating dentrys on bind mounts?
>>>>>> Hi Paul,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> https://lkml.kernel.org/linux-fsdevel/20090608201745.GO8633@ZenIV.linux.org.uk/
>>>>>>
>>>>>> After reading this thread, I have doubt about solving this in VFS.
>>>>>> Honestly, however, I'm not sure if it's entirely relevant today.
>>>>> Have you tried simply mounting proc a second time instead of using a bind mount?
>>>>>
>>>>>  % mount -t proc non /new/location/for/proc
>>>>>
>>>>> I ask because from your description it appears that proc does the
>>>>> right thing with respect to revalidation, it only becomes an issue
>>>>> when accessing proc through a bind mount.  Or did I misunderstand the
>>>>> problem?
>>>> It's not hard to make the problem go away by performing some simple
>>>> action. I was unable to reproduce the problem initially because I
>>>> checked the Smack label on the bind mounted proc entry before doing
>>>> the cat of it. The problem shows up if nothing happens to update the
>>>> inode.
>>> A good point.
>>>
>>> I'm kinda thinking we just leave things as-is, especially since the
>>> proposed fix isn't something anyone is really excited about.
>> "We have to compromise the performance of our sandboxing tool because of
>> a kernel bug that's known and for which a fix is available."
>>
>> If this were just a curiosity that wasn't affecting real development I
>> might agree. But we've got a real world problem, and I don't see ignoring
>> it as a good approach. I can't see maintainers of other LSMs thinking so
>> if this were interfering with their users.
> While the reproducer may be written for Smack, there are plenty of
> indications that this applies to all LSMs and my comments have taken
> that into account.
>
> If you're really that upset, try channeling that outrage into your
> editor and draft a patch for this that isn't awful.

We could "just" wait for the lsm_set_self_attr() syscall to land, and
suggest that it be used instead of the buggy /proc interfaces.

I would love to propose a patch that's less sucky, but have not come
up with one. My understanding of VFS internals isn't up to the task,
I fear.