Re: [PATCH 2/2] Add a new sysctl knob: unprivileged_userfaultfd_user_mode_only

["Michael S. Tsirkin" <mst@redhat.com>]

On Thu, Jul 23, 2020 at 05:13:28PM -0700, Nick Kralevich wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 23, 2020 at 10:30 AM Lokesh Gidra <lokeshgidra@google.com> wrote:
> > From the discussion so far it seems that there is a consensus that
> > patch 1/2 in this series should be upstreamed in any case. Is there
> > anything that is pending on that patch?
> 
> That's my reading of this thread too.
> 
> > > > Unless I'm mistaken that you can already enforce bit 1 of the second
> > > > parameter of the userfaultfd syscall to be set with seccomp-bpf, this
> > > > would be more a question to the Android userland team.
> > > >
> > > > The question would be: does it ever happen that a seccomp filter isn't
> > > > already applied to unprivileged software running without
> > > > SYS_CAP_PTRACE capability?
> > >
> > > Yes.
> > >
> > > Android uses selinux as our primary sandboxing mechanism. We do use
> > > seccomp on a few processes, but we have found that it has a
> > > surprisingly high performance cost [1] on arm64 devices so turning it
> > > on system wide is not a good option.
> > >
> > > [1] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-security-module/202006011116.3F7109A@keescook/T/#m82ace19539ac595682affabdf652c0ffa5d27dad
> 
> As Jeff mentioned, seccomp is used strategically on Android, but is
> not applied to all processes. It's too expensive and impractical when
> simpler implementations (such as this sysctl) can exist. It's also
> significantly simpler to test a sysctl value for correctness as
> opposed to a seccomp filter.

Given that selinux is already used system-wide on Android, what is wrong
with using selinux to control userfaultfd as opposed to seccomp?


> > > >
> > > >
> > > > If answer is "no" the behavior of the new sysctl in patch 2/2 (in
> > > > subject) should be enforceable with minor changes to the BPF
> > > > assembly. Otherwise it'd require more changes.
> 
> It would be good to understand what these changes are.
> 
> > > > Why exactly is it preferable to enlarge the surface of attack of the
> > > > kernel and take the risk there is a real bug in userfaultfd code (not
> > > > just a facilitation of exploiting some other kernel bug) that leads to
> > > > a privilege escalation, when you still break 99% of userfaultfd users,
> > > > if you set with option "2"?
> 
> I can see your point if you think about the feature as a whole.
> However, distributions (such as Android) have specialized knowledge of
> their security environments, and may not want to support the typical
> usages of userfaultfd. For such distributions, providing a mechanism
> to prevent userfaultfd from being useful as an exploit primitive,
> while still allowing the very limited use of userfaultfd for userspace
> faults only, is desirable. Distributions shouldn't be forced into
> supporting 100% of the use cases envisioned by userfaultfd when their
> needs may be more specialized, and this sysctl knob empowers
> distributions to make this choice for themselves.
> 
> > > > Is the system owner really going to purely run on his systems CRIU
> > > > postcopy live migration (which already runs with CAP_SYS_PTRACE) and
> > > > nothing else that could break?
> 
> This is a great example of a capability which a distribution may not
> want to support, due to distribution specific security policies.
> 
> > > >
> > > > Option "2" to me looks with a single possible user, and incidentally
> > > > this single user can already enforce model "2" by only tweaking its
> > > > seccomp-bpf filters without applying 2/2. It'd be a bug if android
> > > > apps runs unprotected by seccomp regardless of 2/2.
> 
> Can you elaborate on what bug is present by processes being
> unprotected by seccomp?
> 
> Seccomp cannot be universally applied on Android due to previously
> mentioned performance concerns. Seccomp is used in Android primarily
> as a tool to enforce the list of allowed syscalls, so that such
> syscalls can be audited before being included as part of the Android
> API.
> 
> -- Nick
> 
> -- 
> Nick Kralevich | nnk@google.com