]> www.infradead.org Git - users/hch/misc.git/commit
ext4: reorder capability check last
authorChristian Göttsche <cgzones@googlemail.com>
Sun, 2 Mar 2025 16:06:39 +0000 (17:06 +0100)
committerTheodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu>
Tue, 18 Mar 2025 04:15:25 +0000 (00:15 -0400)
commit1b419c889c0767a5b66d0a6c566cae491f1cb0f7
tree78874ee27f3ac990225b128746f6fbbfccba5f4f
parent243efbdf8ea665cd698cb02d03fbab6dbc55bf8e
ext4: reorder capability check last

capable() calls refer to enabled LSMs whether to permit or deny the
request.  This is relevant in connection with SELinux, where a
capability check results in a policy decision and by default a denial
message on insufficient permission is issued.
It can lead to three undesired cases:
  1. A denial message is generated, even in case the operation was an
     unprivileged one and thus the syscall succeeded, creating noise.
  2. To avoid the noise from 1. the policy writer adds a rule to ignore
     those denial messages, hiding future syscalls, where the task
     performs an actual privileged operation, leading to hidden limited
     functionality of that task.
  3. To avoid the noise from 1. the policy writer adds a rule to permit
     the task the requested capability, while it does not need it,
     violating the principle of least privilege.

Signed-off-by: Christian Göttsche <cgzones@googlemail.com>
Reviewed-by: Serge Hallyn <serge@hallyn.com>
Reviewed-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20250302160657.127253-2-cgoettsche@seltendoof.de
Signed-off-by: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu>
fs/ext4/balloc.c