[PATCH] RDMA/uverbs: Consider capability of the process that opens the file

[Eric W. Biederman]

Jason Gunthorpe <jgg at nvidia.com> writes:

> On Tue, Mar 18, 2025 at 03:43:07AM +0000, Parav Pandit wrote:
>
>> > I would say no, that is not our model in RDMA. The process that opens the file
>> > is irrelevant. We only check the current system call context for capability,
>> > much like any other systemcall.
>> >
>> Eric explained the motivation [1] and [2] for this fix is:
>> A lesser privilege process A opens the fd (currently caps are not
>> checked), passes the fd to a higher privilege process B.
>
>> And somehow let process B pass the needed capabilities check for
>> resource creation, after which process A continue to use the
>> resource without capability.
>
> Yes, I'd say that is fine within our model, and may even be desirable
> in some cases.
>
> We don't use a file descriptor linked security model, it is always
> secured based on the individual ioctl system call. The file descriptor
> is just a way to route the system calls.
>
> The "setuid cat" risk is interesting, but we are supposed to be
> preventing that by using ioctl, no 'cat' program is going to randomly
> execute ioctls on stdout.

I guess I see a few places where inifiniband uses ioctl.

There are also a lot of places where inifinband uses raw read/write on
file descriptors.  I think last time I looked infiniband wasn't even using
ioctl.

Now maybe using an ioctl is the best you can do at this point, because
of some backwards compatibility. 

> You would not say that if process B creates a CAP_NET_RAW socket FD
> and passes it to process A without CAP_NET_RAW then A should not be
> able to use the FD.

But that is exactly what the infiniband security check were are talking
about appears to be doing.  It is using the credentials of process A
and failing after it was passed by process B.

> The same principle holds here too, the object handles scoped inside
> the FD should have the same kind of security properties as a normal FD
> would.

Which is fine as far as I understand it is fine.  The creation check is
what we were talking about.

Taking from your example above.  If process B with CAP_NET_RAW creates a
FD for opening queue pairs and passes it to process A without
CAP_NET_RAW then A is not able to create queue pairs.

That is what the code in
drivers/infiniband/core/ubvers_cmd.c:create_qp() currenty says.

That is what has us confused.  Exactly the kind of thing you said should
not be happening is happening.

Eric