oss-sec mailing list archives
Disabling ptrace (was Re: [oss-security] Asserts considered harmful (or GMP spills its sensitive information))
From: nisse () lysator liu se (Niels Möller)
Date: Tue, 01 Jan 2019 12:27:07 +0100
Matthew Fernandez <matthew.fernandez () gmail com> writes:
E.g. you can attach to the victim process with gdb/ptrace and simply read its memory, if the sysadmin has not blocked this with Yama or similar.
I think one can disable this in the process itself, using prctl with PR_SET_DUMPABLE. But documentation is a bit unclear and doesn't exlicitly mention effect on ptrace (and other debugging interfaces). If there are any documented best practices, that would be very nice. My main usecase is lshd (an ssh daemon), which spawns a helper process with uid of the logged in user, but with gid set to the utmp group, to provide restricted write access to the utmp database. This is spawned by a process running as root, so no setuid or setgid executables involved. Attaching to that process with gdb may imply privilege escalation to compromise utmp. Last time I tried to investigate, including reading some linux kernel sources, PR_SET_DUMPABLE looked promising. (Note I'm not subscribed to the oss-security list, and I'm dropping the gmp-bugs list where this is off-topic. So please include my email in any replies). Regards, /Niels -- Niels Möller. PGP-encrypted email is preferred. Keyid 368C6677. Internet email is subject to wholesale government surveillance.
Current thread:
- Re: Asserts considered harmful (or GMP spills its sensitive information) Matthew Fernandez (Jan 01)
- Disabling ptrace (was Re: [oss-security] Asserts considered harmful (or GMP spills its sensitive information)) Niels Möller (Jan 01)
- Re: Disabling ptrace Jakub Wilk (Jan 02)
- Re: Disabling ptrace Niels Möller (Jan 02)
- Re: Disabling ptrace Jakub Wilk (Jan 02)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- Re: Asserts considered harmful (or GMP spills its sensitive information) Niels Möller (Jan 01)
- Re: Re: Asserts considered harmful (or GMP spills its sensitive information) Simon McVittie (Jan 01)
- Re: Re: Asserts considered harmful (or GMP spills its sensitive information) halfdog (Jan 01)
- Re: Re: Asserts considered harmful (or GMP spills its sensitive information) Jeffrey Walton (Jan 02)
- Re: Re: Asserts considered harmful (or GMP spills its sensitive information) halfdog (Jan 02)
- Re: Re: Asserts considered harmful (or GMP spills its sensitive information) Simon McVittie (Jan 01)
- Disabling ptrace (was Re: [oss-security] Asserts considered harmful (or GMP spills its sensitive information)) Niels Möller (Jan 01)
- Re: Asserts considered harmful (or GMP spills its sensitive information) Vincent Lefevre (Jan 01)
- Re: Asserts considered harmful (or GMP spills its sensitive information) Niels Möller (Jan 01)
- Re: Asserts considered harmful (or GMP spills its sensitive information) Torbjörn Granlund (Jan 01)
- Re: Asserts considered harmful (or GMP spills its sensitive information) Niels Möller (Jan 01)