LSM namespacing API

[Serge E. Hallyn]

On Wed, Aug 20, 2025 at 10:35:42PM -0400, Paul Moore wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 20, 2025 at 10:05 PM Serge E. Hallyn <serge at hallyn.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, Aug 19, 2025 at 02:51:00PM -0400, Paul Moore wrote:
> > > On Tue, Aug 19, 2025 at 1:47 PM Stephen Smalley
> > > <stephen.smalley.work at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> ...
> 
> > > > Serge pointed out that we also will need an API to attach to an
> > > > existing SELinux namespace, which I captured here:
> > > > https://github.com/stephensmalley/selinuxns/issues/19
> > > > This is handled for other Linux namespaces by opening a pseudo file
> > > > under /proc/pid/ns and invoking setns(2), so not sure how we want to
> > > > do it.
> > >
> > > One option would be to have a the LSM framework return a LSM namespace
> > > "handle" for a given LSM using lsm_get_self_attr(2) and then do a
> > > setns(2)-esque operation using lsm_set_self_attr(2) with that
> > > "handle".  We would need to figure out what would constitute a
> > > "handle" but let's just mark that as TBD for now with this approach (I
> > > think better options are available).
> >
> > The use case which would be complicated (not blocked) by this, is
> >
> > * a runtime creates a process p1
> >   * p1 unshares its lsm namespace
> > * runtime forks a debug/admin process p2
> >   * p2 wants to enter p1's namespace
> >
> > Of course the runtime could work around it by, before relinquishing
> > control of p1 to a new executable, returning the lsm_get_self_attr()
> > data to over a pipe.
> >
> > Note I don't think we should support setting another task's namespace,
> > only getting its namespace ID.
> >
> > > Since we have an existing LSM namespace combination, with processes
> > > running inside of it, it might be sufficient to simply support moving
> > > into an existing LSM namespace set with setns(2) using only a pidfd
> > > and a new CLONE_LSMNS flag (or similar, upstream might want this as
> > > CLONE_NEWLSM).  This would simply set the LSM namespace set for the
> > > setns(2) caller to match that of the target pidfd.  We still wouldn't
> > > want to support CLONE_LSMNS/CLONE_NEWLSM for clone*().
> >
> > A part of me is telling (another part of) me that being able to setns
> > to a subset of the lsms could lead to privilege escapes through
> > weird policy configurations for the various LSMs.  In which case,
> > an all-or-nothing LSM setns might actually be preferable.
> 
> Sorry I probably wasn't as clear as I should have been, but my idea
> with using the existing procfs/setns(2) approach with a single
> CLONE_NEWLSM (name pending sufficient bikeshedding) was that the
> process being setns()'d would simply end up in the exact copy of the
> target process' LSM namespace configuration, it shouldn't be a new

Oh, I think I was being unclear - I thought the first option, using
lsm_set_self_attr(), would allow choosing a subset of LSMs to setns to.
In contrast, the pure setns with a single flag is less flexible, but
possibly safer.  So I typed there the result of my train of thought,
which is that your second suggestion is probably preferable.

> set/subset/configuration ... and I would expect us to have controls
> around that such that LSMs could enforce policy on a setns(2)
> operation that involved their LSM.