Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH v2 0/2] Add dbus-vmstate

[Dr. David Alan Gilbert]

* Daniel P. Berrangé (address@hidden) wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 23, 2019 at 04:14:48PM +0100, Dr. David Alan Gilbert wrote:
> > * Daniel P. Berrangé (address@hidden) wrote:
> > > On Fri, Aug 23, 2019 at 03:56:34PM +0100, Dr. David Alan Gilbert wrote:
> > > > * Daniel P. Berrangé (address@hidden) wrote:
> > > > > If two helpers are running as the same user ID, then can still
> > > > > directly attack each other via things like ptrace or /proc/$PID/mem,
> > > > > unless you've used SELinux to isolate them, or run each as a distinct
> > > > > user ID.  If you do the latter, then we can still easily isolate
> > > > > them using dbus.
> > > > 
> > > > You can lock those down pretty easily though.
> > > 
> > > How were you thinking ?
> > > 
> > > If you're not using SELinux or separate user IDs, then AFAICT you've
> > > got a choice of using seccomp or containers.  seccomp is really hard
> > > to get a useful policy out of with QEMU, and using containers for
> > > each helper process adds a level of complexity worse than selinux
> > > or separate user IDs, so isn't an obvious win over using dbus.
> > 
> > You can just drop the CAP_SYS_PTRACE on the whole lot for that;
> > I thought there was something for /proc/.../mem as well.
> 
> If they're running the same user ID & not SELinux constrained, I don't
> think that trying to block PRACTE / /proc/$PID/mem offers a reassuring
> level of security separation, as there's still plenty of other files
> that will be readable & writable to both vhostuser helper daemons which
> can be leveraged as indirect attack vectors - auditing both helpers and
> every library they link to to ensure nothing can be exploited is very
> hard.

Still, it doesn't mean we shouldn't be careful about anything new we
add.

Dave

> Regards,
> Daniel
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Dr. David Alan Gilbert / address@hidden / Manchester, UK