fd's (was: Changes to LSM phase 1 for audit.)

From: Crispin Cowan (crispinat_private)
Date: Fri Jul 20 2001 - 19:49:15 PDT

  • Next message: jmjonesat_private: "Re: State of Audit Proposal ?"

    David Wagner wrote:
    
    > Casey Schaufler  wrote:
    > >A good audit
    > >analysis tool is going to be able to answer querys based on fd,
    > >such as "where did this Trojan Horse get stdin from?".
    >
    > But this is not responsive to the question.  This may be a good reason
    > to record what fd 0 is connected to when the app was started, but it's
    > not clear to me why this is a good reason to audit the fd on every call
    > to read().
    >
    > (I'll note, though, that this is the closest I've heard to a reason that
    > came close to persuading me: I could imagine that there might be some
    > persuasive argument based on the fact that fds 0, 1, and 2 are special.
    > After some thought, I couldn't think of any such scenario, though, so
    > I must admit that I am still unconvinced.  Please let me know if I am
    > missing something.)
    
    I'm a bit vague on the issue, but there was a spate of vulnerabilities
    (IIRC last year) involving the hijacking of fd's 0, 1, and 2.  The attack
    scenario seemed to involve something to do with child processes inheriting
    stdin/out/error from the parent, those file descriptors pointing to
    something funny, and the child failing to properly close and re-open these
    special descriptors.
    
    This lame description of mine is not sufficient to determine whether
    auditing the fd's passed to open or read would help.  I can't remember
    enough keywords to do an effective web search to find the real details, but
    hopefully I've triggered someone's memory.
    
    Crispin
    
    --
    Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
    Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc. http://wirex.com
    Security Hardened Linux Distribution:       http://immunix.org
    Available for purchase: http://wirex.com/Products/Immunix/purchase.html
    
    
    _______________________________________________
    linux-security-module mailing list
    linux-security-moduleat_private
    http://mail.wirex.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-security-module
    



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Jul 20 2001 - 19:50:25 PDT