[PATCH v4 0/7] Landlock: IOCTL support

Günther Noack gnoack at google.com
Fri Nov 3 15:57:10 UTC 2023 

Hello!

These patches add simple ioctl(2) support to Landlock.

Objective
~~~~~~~~~

Make ioctl(2) requests restrictable with Landlock,
in a way that is useful for real-world applications.

Proposed approach
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Introduce the LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_IOCTL right, which restricts the use
of ioctl(2) on file descriptors.

We attach IOCTL access rights to opened file descriptors, as we
already do for LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_TRUNCATE.

If LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_IOCTL is handled (restricted in the ruleset),
the LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_IOCTL access right governs the use of all IOCTL
commands.

We make an exception for the common and known-harmless IOCTL commands
FIOCLEX, FIONCLEX, FIONBIO and FIONREAD.  These IOCTL commands are
always permitted.  Their functionality is already available through
fcntl(2).

If additionally(!), the access rights LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_READ_FILE,
LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_WRITE_FILE or LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_READ_DIR are
handled, these access rights also unlock some IOCTL commands which are
considered safe for use with files opened in these ways.

As soon as these access rights are handled, the affected IOCTL
commands can not be permitted through LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_IOCTL any
more, but only be permitted through the respective more specific
access rights.  A full list of these access rights is listed below in
this cover letter and in the documentation.

I believe that this approach works for the majority of use cases, and
offers a good trade-off between Landlock API and implementation
complexity and flexibility when the feature is used.

Current limitations
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

With this patch set, ioctl(2) requests can *not* be filtered based on
file type, device number (dev_t) or on the ioctl(2) request number.

On the initial RFC patch set [1], we have reached consensus to start
with this simpler coarse-grained approach, and build additional IOCTL
restriction capabilities on top in subsequent steps.

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-security-module/d4f1395c-d2d4-1860-3a02-2a0c023dd761@digikod.net/

Notable implications of this approach
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

* Existing inherited file descriptors stay unaffected
  when a program enables Landlock.

  This means in particular that in common scenarios,
  the terminal's IOCTLs (ioctl_tty(2)) continue to work.

* ioctl(2) continues to be available for file descriptors acquired
  through means other than open(2).  Example: Network sockets,
  memfd_create(2), file descriptors that are already open before the
  Landlock ruleset is enabled.

Examples
~~~~~~~~

Starting a sandboxed shell from $HOME with samples/landlock/sandboxer:

  LL_FS_RO=/ LL_FS_RW=. ./sandboxer /bin/bash

The LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_IOCTL right is part of the "read-write" rights
here, so we expect that newly opened files outside of $HOME don't work
with most IOCTL commands.

  * "stty" works: It probes terminal properties

  * "stty </dev/tty" fails: /dev/tty can be reopened, but the IOCTL is
    denied.

  * "eject" fails: ioctls to use CD-ROM drive are denied.

  * "ls /dev" works: It uses ioctl to get the terminal size for
    columnar layout

  * The text editors "vim" and "mg" work.  (GNU Emacs fails because it
    attempts to reopen /dev/tty.)

IOCTL groups
~~~~~~~~~~~~

To decide which IOCTL commands should be blanket-permitted we went
through the list of IOCTL commands mentioned in fs/ioctl.c and looked
at them individually to understand what they are about.  The following
list is for reference.

We should always allow the following IOCTL commands, which are also
available through fcntl(2) with the F_SETFD and F_SETFL commands:

 * FIOCLEX, FIONCLEX - these work on the file descriptor and
   manipulate the close-on-exec flag
 * FIONBIO, FIOASYNC - these work on the struct file and enable
   nonblocking-IO and async flags

The following command is guarded and enabled by either of
LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_WRITE_FILE, LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_READ_FILE or
LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_READ_DIR (G2), once one of them is handled
(otherwise by LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_IOCTL):

 * FIOQSIZE - get the size of the opened file

The following commands are guarded and enabled by either of
LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_WRITE_FILE or LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_READ_FILE (G2),
once one of them is handled (otherwise by LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_IOCTL):

These are commands that read file system internals:

 * FS_IOC_FIEMAP - get information about file extent mapping
   (c.f. https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/filesystems/fiemap.txt)
 * FIBMAP - get a file's file system block number
 * FIGETBSZ - get file system blocksize

The following commands are guarded and enabled by
LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_READ_FILE (G3), if it is handled (otherwise by
LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_IOCTL):

 * FIONREAD - get the number of bytes available for reading (the
   implementation is defined per file type)
 * FIDEDUPRANGE - manipulating shared physical storage between files.

The following commands are guarded and enabled by
LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_WRITE_FILE (G4), if it is handled (otherwise by
LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_IOCTL):

 * FICLONE, FICLONERANGE - making files share physical storage between
   multiple files.  These only work on some file systems, by design.
 * FS_IOC_RESVSP, FS_IOC_RESVSP64, FS_IOC_UNRESVSP, FS_IOC_UNRESVSP64,
   FS_IOC_ZERO_RANGE: Backwards compatibility with legacy XFS
   preallocation syscalls which predate fallocate(2).

The following commands are also mentioned in fs/ioctl.c, but are not
handled specially and are managed by LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_IOCTL together
with all other remaining IOCTL commands:

 * FIFREEZE, FITHAW - work on superblock(!) to freeze/thaw the file
   system. Requires CAP_SYS_ADMIN.
 * Accessing file attributes:
   * FS_IOC_GETFLAGS, FS_IOC_SETFLAGS - manipulate inode flags (ioctl_iflags(2))
   * FS_IOC_FSGETXATTR, FS_IOC_FSSETXATTR - more attributes

Open questions
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is unlikely to be the last iteration, but we are getting closer.

Some notable open questions are:

 * Code style
 
   * Should we move the IOCTL access right expansion logic into the
     outer layers in syscall.c?  Where it currently lives in
     ruleset.h, this logic feels too FS-specific, and it introduces
     the additional complication that we now have to track which
     access_mask_t-s are already expanded and which are not.  It might
     be simpler to do the expansion earlier.

   * Rename IOCTL_CMD_G1, ..., IOCTL_CMD_G4 and give them better names.

 * When LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_IOCTL is granted on a file hierarchy,
   should this grant the permission to use *any* IOCTL?  (Right now,
   it is any IOCTL except for the ones covered by the IOCTL groups,
   and it's a bit weird that the scope of LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_IOCTL
   becomes smaller when other access rights are also handled.

 * Backwards compatibility for user-space libraries.

   This is not documented yet, because it is currently not necessary
   yet.  But as soon as we have a hypothetical Landlock ABI v6 with a
   new IOCTL-enabled "GFX" access right, the "best effort" downgrade
   from v6 to v5 becomes more involved: If the caller handles
   GFX+IOCTL and permits GFX on a file, the correct downgrade to make
   this work on a Landlock v5 kernel is to handle IOCTL only, and
   permit IOCTL(!).

Related Work
~~~~~~~~~~~~

OpenBSD's pledge(2) [2] restricts ioctl(2) independent of the file
descriptor which is used.  The implementers maintain multiple
allow-lists of predefined ioctl(2) operations required for different
application domains such as "audio", "bpf", "tty" and "inet".

OpenBSD does not guarantee ABI backwards compatibility to the same
extent as Linux does, so it's easier for them to update these lists in
later versions.  It might not be a feasible approach for Linux though.

[2] https://man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD-7.3/pledge.2

Changes
~~~~~~~

V4:
 * use "synthetic" IOCTL access rights, as previously discussed
 * testing changes
   * use a large fixture-based test, for more exhaustive coverage,
     and replace some of the earlier tests with it
 * rebased on mic-next

V3:
 * always permit the IOCTL commands FIOCLEX, FIONCLEX, FIONBIO, FIOASYNC and
   FIONREAD, independent of LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_IOCTL
 * increment ABI version in the same commit where the feature is introduced
 * testing changes
   * use FIOQSIZE instead of TTY IOCTL commands
     (FIOQSIZE works with regular files, directories and memfds)
   * run the memfd test with both Landlock enabled and disabled
   * add a test for the always-permitted IOCTL commands

V2:
 * rebased on mic-next
 * added documentation
 * exercise ioctl(2) in the memfd test
 * test: Use layout0 for the test

---

V1: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-security-module/20230502171755.9788-1-gnoack3000@gmail.com/
V2: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-security-module/20230623144329.136541-1-gnoack@google.com/
V3: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-security-module/20230814172816.3907299-1-gnoack@google.com/

Günther Noack (7):
  landlock: Optimize the number of calls to get_access_mask slightly
  landlock: Add IOCTL access right
  selftests/landlock: Test IOCTL support
  selftests/landlock: Test IOCTL with memfds
  selftests/landlock: Test ioctl(2) and ftruncate(2) with open(O_PATH)
  samples/landlock: Add support for LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_IOCTL
  landlock: Document IOCTL support

 Documentation/userspace-api/landlock.rst     |  74 ++-
 include/uapi/linux/landlock.h                |  51 +-
 samples/landlock/sandboxer.c                 |  10 +-
 security/landlock/fs.c                       |  74 ++-
 security/landlock/limits.h                   |  10 +-
 security/landlock/ruleset.c                  |   5 +-
 security/landlock/ruleset.h                  |  53 +-
 security/landlock/syscalls.c                 |   6 +-
 tools/testing/selftests/landlock/base_test.c |   2 +-
 tools/testing/selftests/landlock/fs_test.c   | 498 ++++++++++++++++++-
 10 files changed, 735 insertions(+), 48 deletions(-)


base-commit: f12f8f84509a084399444c4422661345a15cc713
-- 
2.42.0.869.gea05f2083d-goog

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