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Ondrej Mosnacek ae254858ce selinux: introduce an initial SID for early boot processes
Currently, SELinux doesn't allow distinguishing between kernel threads
and userspace processes that are started before the policy is first
loaded - both get the label corresponding to the kernel SID. The only
way a process that persists from early boot can get a meaningful label
is by doing a voluntary dyntransition or re-executing itself.

Reusing the kernel label for userspace processes is problematic for
several reasons:
1. The kernel is considered to be a privileged domain and generally
   needs to have a wide range of permissions allowed to work correctly,
   which prevents the policy writer from effectively hardening against
   early boot processes that might remain running unintentionally after
   the policy is loaded (they represent a potential extra attack surface
   that should be mitigated).
2. Despite the kernel being treated as a privileged domain, the policy
   writer may want to impose certain special limitations on kernel
   threads that may conflict with the requirements of intentional early
   boot processes. For example, it is a good hardening practice to limit
   what executables the kernel can execute as usermode helpers and to
   confine the resulting usermode helper processes. However, a
   (legitimate) process surviving from early boot may need to execute a
   different set of executables.
3. As currently implemented, overlayfs remembers the security context of
   the process that created an overlayfs mount and uses it to bound
   subsequent operations on files using this context. If an overlayfs
   mount is created before the SELinux policy is loaded, these "mounter"
   checks are made against the kernel context, which may clash with
   restrictions on the kernel domain (see 2.).

To resolve this, introduce a new initial SID (reusing the slot of the
former "init" initial SID) that will be assigned to any userspace
process started before the policy is first loaded. This is easy to do,
as we can simply label any process that goes through the
bprm_creds_for_exec LSM hook with the new init-SID instead of
propagating the kernel SID from the parent.

To provide backwards compatibility for existing policies that are
unaware of this new semantic of the "init" initial SID, introduce a new
policy capability "userspace_initial_context" and set the "init" SID to
the same context as the "kernel" SID unless this capability is set by
the policy.

Another small backwards compatibility measure is needed in
security_sid_to_context_core() for before the initial SELinux policy
load - see the code comment for explanation.

Signed-off-by: Ondrej Mosnacek <omosnace@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Stephen Smalley <stephen.smalley.work@gmail.com>
[PM: edited comments based on feedback/discussion]
Signed-off-by: Paul Moore <paul@paul-moore.com>
2023-11-21 18:39:59 -05:00
arch parisc architecture fixes for kernel v6.7-rc1 (part 2): 2023-11-12 11:05:31 -08:00
block blk-core: use pr_warn_ratelimited() in bio_check_ro() 2023-11-07 08:15:23 -07:00
certs This update includes the following changes: 2023-11-02 16:15:30 -10:00
crypto This push fixes a regression in ahash and hides the Kconfig sub-options for the jitter RNG. 2023-11-09 17:04:58 -08:00
Documentation Probes fixes for v6.7-rc1: 2023-11-10 16:35:04 -08:00
drivers wifi: iwlwifi: fix system commands group ordering 2023-11-12 11:34:19 -08:00
fs Sixteen smb3/cifs client fixes 2023-11-11 17:17:22 -08:00
include Probes fixes for v6.7-rc1: 2023-11-10 16:35:04 -08:00
init As usual, lots of singleton and doubleton patches all over the tree and 2023-11-02 20:53:31 -10:00
io_uring io_uring: do not clamp read length for multishot read 2023-11-06 13:41:58 -07:00
ipc Many singleton patches against the MM code. The patch series which are 2023-11-02 19:38:47 -10:00
kernel Probes fixes for v6.7-rc1: 2023-11-10 16:35:04 -08:00
lib lib: test_objpool: make global variables static 2023-11-10 19:59:04 +09:00
LICENSES LICENSES: Add the copyleft-next-0.3.1 license 2022-11-08 15:44:01 +01:00
mm memblock: report failures when memblock_can_resize is not set 2023-11-08 09:40:13 -08:00
net Including fixes from netfilter and bpf. 2023-11-09 17:09:35 -08:00
rust Kbuild updates for v6.7 2023-11-04 08:07:19 -10:00
samples Landlock updates for v6.7-rc1 2023-11-03 09:28:53 -10:00
scripts Kbuild updates for v6.7 2023-11-04 08:07:19 -10:00
security selinux: introduce an initial SID for early boot processes 2023-11-21 18:39:59 -05:00
sound sound fixes for 6.7-rc1 2023-11-10 11:57:51 -08:00
tools LoongArch changes for v6.7 2023-11-12 10:58:08 -08:00
usr arch: Remove Itanium (IA-64) architecture 2023-09-11 08:13:17 +00:00
virt ARM: 2023-09-07 13:52:20 -07:00
.clang-format iommu: Add for_each_group_device() 2023-05-23 08:15:51 +02:00
.cocciconfig
.get_maintainer.ignore get_maintainer: add Alan to .get_maintainer.ignore 2022-08-20 15:17:44 -07:00
.gitattributes .gitattributes: set diff driver for Rust source code files 2023-05-31 17:48:25 +02:00
.gitignore kbuild: rpm-pkg: generate kernel.spec in rpmbuild/SPECS/ 2023-10-03 20:49:09 +09:00
.mailmap As usual, lots of singleton and doubleton patches all over the tree and 2023-11-02 20:53:31 -10:00
.rustfmt.toml rust: add .rustfmt.toml 2022-09-28 09:02:20 +02:00
COPYING COPYING: state that all contributions really are covered by this file 2020-02-10 13:32:20 -08:00
CREDITS USB: Remove Wireless USB and UWB documentation 2023-08-09 14:17:32 +02:00
Kbuild Kbuild updates for v6.1 2022-10-10 12:00:45 -07:00
Kconfig kbuild: ensure full rebuild when the compiler is updated 2020-05-12 13:28:33 +09:00
MAINTAINERS MAINTAINERS: update the SELinux entry 2023-11-16 12:45:33 -05:00
Makefile Linux 6.7-rc1 2023-11-12 16:19:07 -08:00
README Drop all 00-INDEX files from Documentation/ 2018-09-09 15:08:58 -06:00

Linux kernel
============

There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.

In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``.  The formatted documentation can also be read online at:

    https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/

There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.

Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.