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Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2010 05:52:58 +0300
From: Solar Designer <solar@...nwall.com>
To: oss-security@...ts.openwall.com
Cc: Daniel Walsh <dwalsh@...hat.com>
Subject: filesystem capabilities
Kees, all -
There's a lot of talk lately regarding replacing the SUID bit on program
binaries in Linux distros with filesystem capabilities. Specifically,
Fedora and Ubuntu are heading in that direction.
Fedora:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/RemoveSETUID
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=646440
Ubuntu:
http://www.outflux.net/blog/archives/2010/02/09/easy-example-of-fscaps/
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Security/FilesystemCapabilties
While in general this is a good idea, there are issues with it, in
arbitrary order:
- Some currently-SUID programs are aware of them being (potentially)
SUID, and will drop the "more privileged" euid when it is no longer
needed, but they will probably not be aware of them possessing
capabilities. This may result in larger parts of the programs
(sometimes orders of magnitude larger) running with elevated privileges
(or with allowed-to-be-elevated privileges, which is a privilege on its
own and is usable through vulnerabilities that allow for arbitrary code
execution). Let's consider ping, which appears to be the classical
example of "where filesystem capabilities will help" (or so it is
claimed). IIRC, it starts by acquiring a raw socket (NB: of a certain
somewhat-limited type), then drops root privs (if it was installed SUID
root and run by non-root), then proceeds to parse the command-line,
resolve the provided hostname, and so on. If the SUID bit is replaced
with cap_net_raw+ep, as seen in Kees' example above, will ping know to
drop this capability? Hardly. Not without a source code patch.
Besides, dropping the capability might [need to] require privileges
beyond CAP_NET_RAW itself (recall the capability-dropping attack on
sendmail from a decade ago). So does moving from SUID root to
cap_net_raw+ep improve security? Most likely not. On the contrary, it
results in hundreds of lines of ping's code and thousands of lines of
library code (DNS resolver) running with elevated privileges, as
compared to just a few lines of ping.c, which was the case with simple
SUID root. Granted, those "elevated privileges" are a lot less than
root privileges, but they're a lot more than having a single raw socket
of a specific type.
- In some cases, the capability sets being granted are (almost)
equivalent (or expandable to) full root powers. This is seen in:
http://people.fedoraproject.org/~dwalsh/policycoreutils_setuid.patch
-%attr(4755,root,root) %{_bindir}/newrole
+%attr(0755,root,root) %caps(cap_audit_write,cap_setuid) %{_bindir}/newrole
-%{_sbindir}/seunshare
+%attr(0755,root,root) %caps(cap_setuid,cap_dac_override,cap_sys_admin,cap_sys_nice) %{_sbindir}/seunshare
This mostly just sweeps the SUID root under the rug, where the sysadmin
will hopefully not see it and thus feel safer. However, it may expose
more problems in the programs if they knew to drop root, but wouldn't
know to drop the capabilities (same issue I described above for ping).
Granted, vulnerabilities of certain classes might become unexploitable
or be partially mitigated. For example, if no direct code execution is
possible (not a buffer overflow, etc.), but "only" privileged access to
an attacker-provided arbitrary pathname is possible, then "newrole"
above would be protected, but "seunshare" above would not (because of
cap_dac_override).
- Completely getting rid of SUID root programs in the default install,
like we did in Owl-current (but without filesystem capabilities!), is a
great idea. It mitigates the impact of possible vulnerabilities in
certain code paths in the dynamic linker, libc, and the kernel.
However, if you have even a single SUID root program left, you do not
achieve this goal. Thus, switching from SUID root to CAP_NET_RAW for
ping, with its tiny and obviously-correct code that used to run as root,
gives you absolutely nothing as long as you keep su and/or sudo
available for invocation (not necessarily actual use) by all users.
For servers, I think people need to reconsider and, in most cases,
disallow invocation of su and sudo by the users. There's no added
security from the old "login as non-root, then su or sudo to root"
sysadmin "wisdom", as compared to logging in as non-root and as root
directly (two separate sessions). On the contrary, the latter approach
is the only correct one, from a security standpoint:
http://www.openwall.com/lists/owl-users/2004/10/20/6
(For accountability of multiple sysadmins, the system needs to support
having multiple root-privileged accounts, like Owl does.)
(For desktops with X, this gets trickier.)
You also absolutely have to deal with passwd, which would be another
SUID root program. Like we did:
http://www.openwall.com/tcb/
And with all others (e.g., our crontab/at and crond changes). :-)
- Support for filesystem capabilities and extended attributes is still
not mature. Many userspace tools (such as for backup/restore) lack it.
Thus, if you must, it might make sense to use a poor man's replacement,
which will be more reliable. Introduce a sysctl to configure a groups
range to map onto capabilities. With 32 or 64 group IDs allocated for
the purpose, you can have any one capability set.
<gettingold>I briefly experimented with just that on a Slackware 3.1
system with capabilities support patched into the 2.0.x kernel, with the
caps-by-gid changes hacked into the kernel on top of the capabilities
patch on my own. That was in 1998 or so. The conclusion was that
without userspace patches this would achieve too little.</gettingold>
With 1024 or 4096 IDs (or 992 or 4032 with a smarter approach), you can
have any two caps. 32-bit GIDs permit you to have up to 5 or 6 caps
simultaneously in this way. I think that in practice 1 or 2 caps will
be enough; the cases where you'd assign more are typically the ones
where the caps are (almost) equivalent to root anyway.
This is more reliable in several aspects:
* The SGID bit and st_gid are stored/restored by all existing Unix
backup/restore/copy/packaging tools.
* Such programs are easy for a sysadmin to identify with the familiar
options to "find", etc.
* Programs either already know to drop the "elevated" egid or are easy
to teach to do so (and the kernel patch may include logic to drop
egid-granted caps when the egid is dropped). This does not require
privileges on its own. And that fact will not confuse any correct but
old program (no "sendmail risk").
- For ping in particular, we've been considering another approach -
namely, a new socket type (non-raw ICMP, similar to the usual UDP
sockets). This would eliminate the need for ping to run with elevated
privileges, or we could introduce some privilege boundary (SGID to some
sysctl'able ICMP-socket-enabling group) just not to expose potential
vulnerabilities in the added kernel code. We have a Linux 2.4.x patch
and a ping patch to implement this, both by Pavel Kankovsky. It's my
fault this never actually got into Owl (so far); I ran out of time.
Any volunteers to update this to Linux 2.6.x, introduce the sysctl, and
actually make use of it in a distro? Please let me know.
Thanks for reading this far, and I'd appreciate any comments and/or
corrections. Some of the info above might be outdated - e.g., I am not
sure of what current kernels require (or not) to drop capabilities.
(If they no longer require anything extra to drop CAP_SETUID, then
that's a security problem on its own - the "sendmail risk" is back.)
Alexander
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