Bug 517659 - Changes for lowering capabilities project
Summary: Changes for lowering capabilities project
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: gpm
Version: rawhide
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
low
medium
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Nikola Pajkovsky
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks: 519823
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2009-08-15 18:55 UTC by Steve Grubb
Modified: 2014-02-02 22:13 UTC (History)
5 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2010-01-11 17:40:07 UTC
Type: ---
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)
Patch to drop capabilities (1.68 KB, patch)
2009-08-15 18:55 UTC, Steve Grubb
no flags Details | Diff

Description Steve Grubb 2009-08-15 18:55:14 UTC
Created attachment 357546 [details]
Patch to drop capabilities

Description of problem:
As part of the lowering capabilities project, we should drop all unnecessary
capabilities in gpm

Comment 1 Zdenek Prikryl 2009-08-20 08:55:30 UTC
The patch is added in rawhide. Thanks.

Comment 2 Steve Grubb 2009-08-24 12:31:52 UTC
Thanks for applying the patch. I forgot to mention that you need to add a BuildRequires: libcap-ng-devel so configure finds the library. Do you mind re-spinning with the BR added? Thanks.

Comment 3 Eduard Benes 2010-01-08 14:46:27 UTC
Patch for this bug had to be actually dropped in gpm-1.20.6-8. Lowering the capabilities as proposed in the patch introduced bug #537724. Current state is that we do not lower the proposed capabilities in gpm.

Brief summary:

SELinux provides -
   allow gpm_t gpm_t : capability { dac_override setuid setpcap sys_admin sys_tty_config } ; 

The patch provides - 
  CAP_SYS_ADMIN, CAP_SYS_TTY_CONFIG

Adding CAP_DAC_OVERRIDE capability to the patch, which unfortunately gives the daemon ability to do almost anything to the system, fixes the bug #537724. 
Therefore it would be useless to confine the gpm in a such way and the patch 
can be dropped. 

Steve, is this correct? Is there anything else we can do for lowering capabilities in gpm?

Comment 4 Steve Grubb 2010-01-08 15:09:57 UTC
That is correct. If you allow DAC_OVERRIDE, then gpm can read or write any file on the system and its pointless to protect against anything. Gpm may not be able to directly perform privileged ops like open a raw socket, but it would be able to write a root cron job that would. So, in the threat model I am trying to protect against, DAC_OVERRIDE presents too big of a hole.

Comment 5 Nikola Pajkovsky 2010-01-11 17:40:07 UTC
 closing per comments 3,4


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