[PATCH v13 5/9] namei: LOOKUP_IN_ROOT: chroot-like path resolution

[Aleksa Sarai]

The primary motivation for the need for this flag is container runtimes
which have to interact with malicious root filesystems in the host
namespaces. One of the first requirements for a container runtime to be
secure against a malicious rootfs is that they correctly scope symlinks
(that is, they should be scoped as though they are chroot(2)ed into the
container's rootfs) and ".."-style paths[*]. The already-existing
LOOKUP_NO_XDEV and LOOKUP_NO_MAGICLINKS help defend against other
potential attacks in a malicious rootfs scenario.

Currently most container runtimes try to do this resolution in
userspace[1], causing many potential race conditions. In addition, the
"obvious" alternative (actually performing a {ch,pivot_}root(2))
requires a fork+exec (for some runtimes) which is *very* costly if
necessary for every filesystem operation involving a container.

[*] At the moment, ".." and magic-link jumping are disallowed for the
    same reason it is disabled for LOOKUP_BENEATH -- currently it is not
    safe to allow it. Future patches may enable it unconditionally once
    we have resolved the possible races (for "..") and semantics (for
    magic-link jumping).

The most significant *at(2) semantic change with LOOKUP_IN_ROOT is that
absolute pathnames no longer cause the dirfd to be ignored completely.

The rationale is that LOOKUP_IN_ROOT must necessarily chroot-scope
symlinks with absolute paths to dirfd, and so doing it for the base path
seems to be the most consistent behaviour (and also avoids foot-gunning
users who want to scope paths that are absolute).

[1]: https://github.com/cyphar/filepath-securejoin

Signed-off-by: Aleksa Sarai <cyphar at cyphar.com>
---
 fs/namei.c            | 5 +++++
 include/linux/namei.h | 3 ++-
 2 files changed, 7 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/fs/namei.c b/fs/namei.c
index b80efc0ae0f3..efed62c6136e 100644
--- a/fs/namei.c
+++ b/fs/namei.c
@@ -2274,6 +2274,11 @@ static const char *path_init(struct nameidata *nd, unsigned flags)
 
 	nd->m_seq = read_seqbegin(&mount_lock);
 
+	/* LOOKUP_IN_ROOT treats absolute paths as being relative-to-dirfd. */
+	if (flags & LOOKUP_IN_ROOT)
+		while (*s == '/')
+			s++;
+
 	/* Figure out the starting path and root (if needed). */
 	if (*s == '/') {
 		error = nd_jump_root(nd);
diff --git a/include/linux/namei.h b/include/linux/namei.h
index 88b610ca4d83..1ace31052237 100644
--- a/include/linux/namei.h
+++ b/include/linux/namei.h
@@ -48,8 +48,9 @@ enum {LAST_NORM, LAST_ROOT, LAST_DOT, LAST_DOTDOT, LAST_BIND};
 #define LOOKUP_NO_MAGICLINKS	0x080000 /* No /proc/$pid/fd/ "symlink" crossing. */
 #define LOOKUP_NO_SYMLINKS	0x100000 /* No symlink crossing *at all*.
 					    Implies LOOKUP_NO_MAGICLINKS. */
+#define LOOKUP_IN_ROOT		0x200000 /* Treat dirfd as %current->fs->root. */
 /* LOOKUP_* flags which do scope-related checks based on the dirfd. */
-#define LOOKUP_DIRFD_SCOPE_FLAGS LOOKUP_BENEATH
+#define LOOKUP_DIRFD_SCOPE_FLAGS (LOOKUP_BENEATH | LOOKUP_IN_ROOT)
 
 extern int path_pts(struct path *path);
 
-- 
2.23.0