Re: question about bprm_ops->alloc_security(&bprm) (fwd)

From: Stephen Smalley (sdsat_private)
Date: Thu Feb 07 2002 - 08:11:51 PST

  • Next message: Huagang Xie: "Re: question about bprm_ops->alloc_security(&bprm) (fwd)"

    On Thu, 7 Feb 2002 Valdis.Kletnieksat_private wrote:
    
    > I'm assuming that the goal here is to scan the environment being
    > passed, and do something if you find something odd (for instance,
    > LD_PRELOAD being set for a set[ug]id binary)?
    
    Right.  Or more generally, LD_* being set for any program that causes an
    increase in privilege/permissions when it is executed.  ld.so only knows
    about setuid/setgid, so it isn't aware of other security models (full
    POSIX.1e capabilities, LIDS, TE, etc) where this might be a concern.
    
    > If so, are there any environment variables that a security module should
    > be scanning for, rather than the application handling it itself?  Yes,
    > I know there *was* an LD_PRELOAD issue - but that got fixed where it should
    > be fixed.  And in the general case, pre-filtering for sanity is probably
    > a lost cause - I've seen programs borked because one of the LC_* locale
    > environments was motified.  On the other hand, I've personally used
    > (admittedly ugly) code like 'TZ=EST29EDT date +%m%d' to get yesterday's
    > date....
    
    You can't expect ld.so to be aware of the security model of an arbitrary
    LSM security module, unless each project provides a modified ld.so.  So
    filtering the LD_* variables may be reasonable for a security module.  To
    some extent, the threat posed by the LD_* variables can be countered in
    other ways, e.g. controlling attempts to mmap with execute access and
    preventing more privileged domains from executing untrustworthy code.
    SELinux does this, and you consequently can't just point LD_PRELOAD to
    your own shared object when executing a program that causes a domain
    transition.  But there is still the potential for mischief.
    
    --
    Stephen D. Smalley, NAI Labs
    ssmalleyat_private
    
    
    
    
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