The 9p protocol does not specifically define how server shall behave when
client tries to open a special file, however from security POV it does
make sense for 9p server to prohibit opening any special file on host side
in general. A sane Linux 9p client for instance would never attempt to
open a special file on host side, it would always handle those exclusively
on its guest side. A malicious client however could potentially escape
from the exported 9p tree by creating and opening a device file on host
side.
With QEMU this could only be exploited in the following unsafe setups:
- Running QEMU binary as root AND 9p 'local' fs driver AND 'passthrough'
security model.
or
- Using 9p 'proxy' fs driver (which is running its helper daemon as
root).
These setups were already discouraged for safety reasons before,
however for obvious reasons we are now tightening behaviour on this.
Fixes: CVE-2023-2861
Reported-by: Yanwu Shen <ywsPlz@gmail.com>
Reported-by: Jietao Xiao <shawtao1125@gmail.com>
Reported-by: Jinku Li <jkli@xidian.edu.cn>
Reported-by: Wenbo Shen <shenwenbo@zju.edu.cn>
Signed-off-by: Christian Schoenebeck <qemu_oss@crudebyte.com>
Reviewed-by: Greg Kurz <groug@kaod.org>