linux.git/include/linux/capability.h, branch v6.6.131

ipc: don't audit capability check in ipc_permissions()

2026-03-04T12:19:49+00:00

[ Upstream commit 071588136007482d70fd2667b827036bc60b1f8f ]

The IPC sysctls implement the ctl_table_root::permissions hook and
they override the file access mode based on the CAP_CHECKPOINT_RESTORE
capability, which is being checked regardless of whether any access is
actually denied or not, so if an LSM denies the capability, an audit
record may be logged even when access is in fact granted.

It wouldn't be viable to restructure the sysctl permission logic to only
check the capability when the access would be actually denied if it's
not granted. Thus, do the same as in net_ctl_permissions()
(net/sysctl_net.c) - switch from ns_capable() to ns_capable_noaudit(),
so that the check never emits an audit record.

Fixes: 0889f44e2810 ("ipc: Check permissions for checkpoint_restart sysctls at open time")
Signed-off-by: Ondrej Mosnacek 
Acked-by: Alexey Gladkov 
Acked-by: Serge Hallyn 
Signed-off-by: Serge Hallyn 
Stable-dep-of: 8924336531e2 ("ipc: don't audit capability check in ipc_permissions()")
Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin

capability: just use a 'u64' instead of a 'u32[2]' array

2023-03-01T18:01:22+00:00

Back in 2008 we extended the capability bits from 32 to 64, and we did
it by extending the single 32-bit capability word from one word to an
array of two words.  It was then obfuscated by hiding the "2" behind two
macro expansions, with the reasoning being that maybe it gets extended
further some day.

That reasoning may have been valid at the time, but the last thing we
want to do is to extend the capability set any more.  And the array of
values not only causes source code oddities (with loops to deal with
it), but also results in worse code generation.  It's a lose-lose
situation.

So just change the 'u32[2]' into a 'u64' and be done with it.

We still have to deal with the fact that the user space interface is
designed around an array of these 32-bit values, but that was the case
before too, since the array layouts were different (ie user space
doesn't use an array of 32-bit values for individual capability masks,
but an array of 32-bit slices of multiple masks).

So that marshalling of data is actually simplified too, even if it does
remain somewhat obscure and odd.

This was all triggered by my reaction to the new "cap_isidentical()"
introduced recently.  By just using a saner data structure, it went from

	unsigned __capi;
	CAP_FOR_EACH_U32(__capi) {
		if (a.cap[__capi] != b.cap[__capi])
			return false;
	}
	return true;

to just being

	return a.val == b.val;

instead.  Which is rather more obvious both to humans and to compilers.

Cc: Mateusz Guzik 
Cc: Casey Schaufler 
Cc: Serge Hallyn 
Cc: Al Viro 
Cc: Paul Moore 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

capability: add cap_isidentical

2023-02-28T00:39:19+00:00

Signed-off-by: Mateusz Guzik 
Reviewed-by: Serge Hallyn 
Cc: Al Viro 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

fs: port privilege checking helpers to mnt_idmap

2023-01-19T08:24:29+00:00

Convert to struct mnt_idmap.

Last cycle we merged the necessary infrastructure in
256c8aed2b42 ("fs: introduce dedicated idmap type for mounts").
This is just the conversion to struct mnt_idmap.

Currently we still pass around the plain namespace that was attached to a
mount. This is in general pretty convenient but it makes it easy to
conflate namespaces that are relevant on the filesystem with namespaces
that are relevent on the mount level. Especially for non-vfs developers
without detailed knowledge in this area this can be a potential source for
bugs.

Once the conversion to struct mnt_idmap is done all helpers down to the
really low-level helpers will take a struct mnt_idmap argument instead of
two namespace arguments. This way it becomes impossible to conflate the two
eliminating the possibility of any bugs. All of the vfs and all filesystems
only operate on struct mnt_idmap.

Acked-by: Dave Chinner 
Reviewed-by: Christoph Hellwig 
Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner (Microsoft)

fs: port xattr to mnt_idmap

2023-01-19T08:24:28+00:00

Convert to struct mnt_idmap.

Last cycle we merged the necessary infrastructure in
256c8aed2b42 ("fs: introduce dedicated idmap type for mounts").
This is just the conversion to struct mnt_idmap.

Currently we still pass around the plain namespace that was attached to a
mount. This is in general pretty convenient but it makes it easy to
conflate namespaces that are relevant on the filesystem with namespaces
that are relevent on the mount level. Especially for non-vfs developers
without detailed knowledge in this area this can be a potential source for
bugs.

Once the conversion to struct mnt_idmap is done all helpers down to the
really low-level helpers will take a struct mnt_idmap argument instead of
two namespace arguments. This way it becomes impossible to conflate the two
eliminating the possibility of any bugs. All of the vfs and all filesystems
only operate on struct mnt_idmap.

Acked-by: Dave Chinner 
Reviewed-by: Christoph Hellwig 
Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner (Microsoft)

commoncap: handle idmapped mounts

2021-01-24T13:27:17+00:00

When interacting with user namespace and non-user namespace aware
filesystem capabilities the vfs will perform various security checks to
determine whether or not the filesystem capabilities can be used by the
caller, whether they need to be removed and so on. The main
infrastructure for this resides in the capability codepaths but they are
called through the LSM security infrastructure even though they are not
technically an LSM or optional. This extends the existing security hooks
security_inode_removexattr(), security_inode_killpriv(),
security_inode_getsecurity() to pass down the mount's user namespace and
makes them aware of idmapped mounts.

In order to actually get filesystem capabilities from disk the
capability infrastructure exposes the get_vfs_caps_from_disk() helper.
For user namespace aware filesystem capabilities a root uid is stored
alongside the capabilities.

In order to determine whether the caller can make use of the filesystem
capability or whether it needs to be ignored it is translated according
to the superblock's user namespace. If it can be translated to uid 0
according to that id mapping the caller can use the filesystem
capabilities stored on disk. If we are accessing the inode that holds
the filesystem capabilities through an idmapped mount we map the root
uid according to the mount's user namespace. Afterwards the checks are
identical to non-idmapped mounts: reading filesystem caps from disk
enforces that the root uid associated with the filesystem capability
must have a mapping in the superblock's user namespace and that the
caller is either in the same user namespace or is a descendant of the
superblock's user namespace. For filesystems that are mountable inside
user namespace the caller can just mount the filesystem and won't
usually need to idmap it. If they do want to idmap it they can create an
idmapped mount and mark it with a user namespace they created and which
is thus a descendant of s_user_ns. For filesystems that are not
mountable inside user namespaces the descendant rule is trivially true
because the s_user_ns will be the initial user namespace.

If the initial user namespace is passed nothing changes so non-idmapped
mounts will see identical behavior as before.

Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20210121131959.646623-11-christian.brauner@ubuntu.com
Cc: Christoph Hellwig 
Cc: David Howells 
Cc: Al Viro 
Cc: linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org
Reviewed-by: Christoph Hellwig 
Acked-by: James Morris 
Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner

acl: handle idmapped mounts

2021-01-24T13:27:17+00:00

The posix acl permission checking helpers determine whether a caller is
privileged over an inode according to the acls associated with the
inode. Add helpers that make it possible to handle acls on idmapped
mounts.

The vfs and the filesystems targeted by this first iteration make use of
posix_acl_fix_xattr_from_user() and posix_acl_fix_xattr_to_user() to
translate basic posix access and default permissions such as the
ACL_USER and ACL_GROUP type according to the initial user namespace (or
the superblock's user namespace) to and from the caller's current user
namespace. Adapt these two helpers to handle idmapped mounts whereby we
either map from or into the mount's user namespace depending on in which
direction we're translating.
Similarly, cap_convert_nscap() is used by the vfs to translate user
namespace and non-user namespace aware filesystem capabilities from the
superblock's user namespace to the caller's user namespace. Enable it to
handle idmapped mounts by accounting for the mount's user namespace.

In addition the fileystems targeted in the first iteration of this patch
series make use of the posix_acl_chmod() and, posix_acl_update_mode()
helpers. Both helpers perform permission checks on the target inode. Let
them handle idmapped mounts. These two helpers are called when posix
acls are set by the respective filesystems to handle this case we extend
the ->set() method to take an additional user namespace argument to pass
the mount's user namespace down.

Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20210121131959.646623-9-christian.brauner@ubuntu.com
Cc: Christoph Hellwig 
Cc: David Howells 
Cc: Al Viro 
Cc: linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org
Reviewed-by: Christoph Hellwig 
Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner

capability: handle idmapped mounts

2021-01-24T13:27:16+00:00

In order to determine whether a caller holds privilege over a given
inode the capability framework exposes the two helpers
privileged_wrt_inode_uidgid() and capable_wrt_inode_uidgid(). The former
verifies that the inode has a mapping in the caller's user namespace and
the latter additionally verifies that the caller has the requested
capability in their current user namespace.
If the inode is accessed through an idmapped mount map it into the
mount's user namespace. Afterwards the checks are identical to
non-idmapped inodes. If the initial user namespace is passed all
operations are a nop so non-idmapped mounts will not see a change in
behavior.

Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20210121131959.646623-5-christian.brauner@ubuntu.com
Cc: Christoph Hellwig 
Cc: David Howells 
Cc: Al Viro 
Cc: linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org
Reviewed-by: Christoph Hellwig 
Reviewed-by: James Morris 
Acked-by: Serge Hallyn 
Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner

vfs: move cap_convert_nscap() call into vfs_setxattr()

2020-12-14T14:26:13+00:00

cap_convert_nscap() does permission checking as well as conversion of the
xattr value conditionally based on fs's user-ns.

This is needed by overlayfs and probably other layered fs (ecryptfs) and is
what vfs_foo() is supposed to do anyway.

Signed-off-by: Miklos Szeredi 
Acked-by: James Morris

capabilities: Introduce CAP_CHECKPOINT_RESTORE

2020-07-19T18:14:42+00:00

This patch introduces CAP_CHECKPOINT_RESTORE, a new capability facilitating
checkpoint/restore for non-root users.

Over the last years, The CRIU (Checkpoint/Restore In Userspace) team has
been asked numerous times if it is possible to checkpoint/restore a
process as non-root. The answer usually was: 'almost'.

The main blocker to restore a process as non-root was to control the PID
of the restored process. This feature available via the clone3 system
call, or via /proc/sys/kernel/ns_last_pid is unfortunately guarded by
CAP_SYS_ADMIN.

In the past two years, requests for non-root checkpoint/restore have
increased due to the following use cases:
* Checkpoint/Restore in an HPC environment in combination with a
resource manager distributing jobs where users are always running as
non-root. There is a desire to provide a way to checkpoint and
restore long running jobs.
* Container migration as non-root
* We have been in contact with JVM developers who are integrating
CRIU into a Java VM to decrease the startup time. These
checkpoint/restore applications are not meant to be running with
CAP_SYS_ADMIN.

We have seen the following workarounds:
* Use a setuid wrapper around CRIU:
See https://github.com/FredHutch/slurm-examples/blob/master/checkpointer/lib/checkpointer/checkpointer-suid.c
* Use a setuid helper that writes to ns_last_pid.
Unfortunately, this helper delegation technique is impossible to use
with clone3, and is thus prone to races.
See https://github.com/twosigma/set_ns_last_pid
* Cycle through PIDs with fork() until the desired PID is reached:
This has been demonstrated to work with cycling rates of 100,000 PIDs/s
See https://github.com/twosigma/set_ns_last_pid
* Patch out the CAP_SYS_ADMIN check from the kernel
* Run the desired application in a new user and PID namespace to provide
a local CAP_SYS_ADMIN for controlling PIDs. This technique has limited
use in typical container environments (e.g., Kubernetes) as /proc is
typically protected with read-only layers (e.g., /proc/sys) for
hardening purposes. Read-only layers prevent additional /proc mounts
(due to proc's SB_I_USERNS_VISIBLE property), making the use of new
PID namespaces limited as certain applications need access to /proc
matching their PID namespace.

The introduced capability allows to:
* Control PIDs when the current user is CAP_CHECKPOINT_RESTORE capable
for the corresponding PID namespace via ns_last_pid/clone3.
* Open files in /proc/pid/map_files when the current user is
CAP_CHECKPOINT_RESTORE capable in the root namespace, useful for
recovering files that are unreachable via the file system such as
deleted files, or memfd files.

See corresponding selftest for an example with clone3().

Signed-off-by: Adrian Reber
Signed-off-by: Nicolas Viennot
Reviewed-by: Serge Hallyn
Acked-by: Christian Brauner
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20200719100418.2112740-2-areber@redhat.com
Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner