linux/Documentation/sysctl
Salvatore Mesoraca 30aba6656f namei: allow restricted O_CREAT of FIFOs and regular files
Disallows open of FIFOs or regular files not owned by the user in world
writable sticky directories, unless the owner is the same as that of the
directory or the file is opened without the O_CREAT flag.  The purpose
is to make data spoofing attacks harder.  This protection can be turned
on and off separately for FIFOs and regular files via sysctl, just like
the symlinks/hardlinks protection.  This patch is based on Openwall's
"HARDEN_FIFO" feature by Solar Designer.

This is a brief list of old vulnerabilities that could have been prevented
by this feature, some of them even allow for privilege escalation:

CVE-2000-1134
CVE-2007-3852
CVE-2008-0525
CVE-2009-0416
CVE-2011-4834
CVE-2015-1838
CVE-2015-7442
CVE-2016-7489

This list is not meant to be complete.  It's difficult to track down all
vulnerabilities of this kind because they were often reported without any
mention of this particular attack vector.  In fact, before
hardlinks/symlinks restrictions, fifos/regular files weren't the favorite
vehicle to exploit them.

[s.mesoraca16@gmail.com: fix bug reported by Dan Carpenter]
  Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20180426081456.GA7060@mwanda
  Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1524829819-11275-1-git-send-email-s.mesoraca16@gmail.com
[keescook@chromium.org: drop pr_warn_ratelimited() in favor of audit changes in the future]
[keescook@chromium.org: adjust commit subjet]
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20180416175918.GA13494@beast
Signed-off-by: Salvatore Mesoraca <s.mesoraca16@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
Suggested-by: Solar Designer <solar@openwall.com>
Suggested-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
Cc: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
Cc: Dan Carpenter <dan.carpenter@oracle.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2018-08-23 18:48:43 -07:00
..
00-INDEX sysctl: remove obsolete comments 2011-01-13 08:03:18 -08:00
README docs: Update binfmt_misc links 2017-10-03 15:23:38 -06:00
abi.txt
fs.txt namei: allow restricted O_CREAT of FIFOs and regular files 2018-08-23 18:48:43 -07:00
kernel.txt ipc: reorganize initialization of kern_ipc_perm.seq 2018-08-22 10:52:51 -07:00
net.txt bpf, x86_32: add eBPF JIT compiler for ia32 2018-05-03 18:15:25 +02:00
sunrpc.txt
user.txt Documentation/sysctl/user.txt: fix typo 2018-02-06 18:32:48 -08:00
vm.txt Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt: update __vm_enough_memory()'s path 2018-08-22 10:52:44 -07:00

README

Documentation for /proc/sys/		kernel version 2.2.10
	(c) 1998, 1999,  Rik van Riel <riel@nl.linux.org>

'Why', I hear you ask, 'would anyone even _want_ documentation
for them sysctl files? If anybody really needs it, it's all in
the source...'

Well, this documentation is written because some people either
don't know they need to tweak something, or because they don't
have the time or knowledge to read the source code.

Furthermore, the programmers who built sysctl have built it to
be actually used, not just for the fun of programming it :-)

==============================================================

Legal blurb:

As usual, there are two main things to consider:
1. you get what you pay for
2. it's free

The consequences are that I won't guarantee the correctness of
this document, and if you come to me complaining about how you
screwed up your system because of wrong documentation, I won't
feel sorry for you. I might even laugh at you...

But of course, if you _do_ manage to screw up your system using
only the sysctl options used in this file, I'd like to hear of
it. Not only to have a great laugh, but also to make sure that
you're the last RTFMing person to screw up.

In short, e-mail your suggestions, corrections and / or horror
stories to: <riel@nl.linux.org>

Rik van Riel.

==============================================================

Introduction:

Sysctl is a means of configuring certain aspects of the kernel
at run-time, and the /proc/sys/ directory is there so that you
don't even need special tools to do it!
In fact, there are only four things needed to use these config
facilities:
- a running Linux system
- root access
- common sense (this is especially hard to come by these days)
- knowledge of what all those values mean

As a quick 'ls /proc/sys' will show, the directory consists of
several (arch-dependent?) subdirs. Each subdir is mainly about
one part of the kernel, so you can do configuration on a piece
by piece basis, or just some 'thematic frobbing'.

The subdirs are about:
abi/		execution domains & personalities
debug/		<empty>
dev/		device specific information (eg dev/cdrom/info)
fs/		specific filesystems
		filehandle, inode, dentry and quota tuning
		binfmt_misc <Documentation/admin-guide/binfmt-misc.rst>
kernel/		global kernel info / tuning
		miscellaneous stuff
net/		networking stuff, for documentation look in:
		<Documentation/networking/>
proc/		<empty>
sunrpc/		SUN Remote Procedure Call (NFS)
vm/		memory management tuning
		buffer and cache management
user/		Per user per user namespace limits

These are the subdirs I have on my system. There might be more
or other subdirs in another setup. If you see another dir, I'd
really like to hear about it :-)