Go to file
David Howells 2e12256b9a keys: Replace uid/gid/perm permissions checking with an ACL
Replace the uid/gid/perm permissions checking on a key with an ACL to allow
the SETATTR and SEARCH permissions to be split.  This will also allow a
greater range of subjects to represented.

============
WHY DO THIS?
============

The problem is that SETATTR and SEARCH cover a slew of actions, not all of
which should be grouped together.

For SETATTR, this includes actions that are about controlling access to a
key:

 (1) Changing a key's ownership.

 (2) Changing a key's security information.

 (3) Setting a keyring's restriction.

And actions that are about managing a key's lifetime:

 (4) Setting an expiry time.

 (5) Revoking a key.

and (proposed) managing a key as part of a cache:

 (6) Invalidating a key.

Managing a key's lifetime doesn't really have anything to do with
controlling access to that key.

Expiry time is awkward since it's more about the lifetime of the content
and so, in some ways goes better with WRITE permission.  It can, however,
be set unconditionally by a process with an appropriate authorisation token
for instantiating a key, and can also be set by the key type driver when a
key is instantiated, so lumping it with the access-controlling actions is
probably okay.

As for SEARCH permission, that currently covers:

 (1) Finding keys in a keyring tree during a search.

 (2) Permitting keyrings to be joined.

 (3) Invalidation.

But these don't really belong together either, since these actions really
need to be controlled separately.

Finally, there are number of special cases to do with granting the
administrator special rights to invalidate or clear keys that I would like
to handle with the ACL rather than key flags and special checks.


===============
WHAT IS CHANGED
===============

The SETATTR permission is split to create two new permissions:

 (1) SET_SECURITY - which allows the key's owner, group and ACL to be
     changed and a restriction to be placed on a keyring.

 (2) REVOKE - which allows a key to be revoked.

The SEARCH permission is split to create:

 (1) SEARCH - which allows a keyring to be search and a key to be found.

 (2) JOIN - which allows a keyring to be joined as a session keyring.

 (3) INVAL - which allows a key to be invalidated.

The WRITE permission is also split to create:

 (1) WRITE - which allows a key's content to be altered and links to be
     added, removed and replaced in a keyring.

 (2) CLEAR - which allows a keyring to be cleared completely.  This is
     split out to make it possible to give just this to an administrator.

 (3) REVOKE - see above.


Keys acquire ACLs which consist of a series of ACEs, and all that apply are
unioned together.  An ACE specifies a subject, such as:

 (*) Possessor - permitted to anyone who 'possesses' a key
 (*) Owner - permitted to the key owner
 (*) Group - permitted to the key group
 (*) Everyone - permitted to everyone

Note that 'Other' has been replaced with 'Everyone' on the assumption that
you wouldn't grant a permit to 'Other' that you wouldn't also grant to
everyone else.

Further subjects may be made available by later patches.

The ACE also specifies a permissions mask.  The set of permissions is now:

	VIEW		Can view the key metadata
	READ		Can read the key content
	WRITE		Can update/modify the key content
	SEARCH		Can find the key by searching/requesting
	LINK		Can make a link to the key
	SET_SECURITY	Can change owner, ACL, expiry
	INVAL		Can invalidate
	REVOKE		Can revoke
	JOIN		Can join this keyring
	CLEAR		Can clear this keyring


The KEYCTL_SETPERM function is then deprecated.

The KEYCTL_SET_TIMEOUT function then is permitted if SET_SECURITY is set,
or if the caller has a valid instantiation auth token.

The KEYCTL_INVALIDATE function then requires INVAL.

The KEYCTL_REVOKE function then requires REVOKE.

The KEYCTL_JOIN_SESSION_KEYRING function then requires JOIN to join an
existing keyring.

The JOIN permission is enabled by default for session keyrings and manually
created keyrings only.


======================
BACKWARD COMPATIBILITY
======================

To maintain backward compatibility, KEYCTL_SETPERM will translate the
permissions mask it is given into a new ACL for a key - unless
KEYCTL_SET_ACL has been called on that key, in which case an error will be
returned.

It will convert possessor, owner, group and other permissions into separate
ACEs, if each portion of the mask is non-zero.

SETATTR permission turns on all of INVAL, REVOKE and SET_SECURITY.  WRITE
permission turns on WRITE, REVOKE and, if a keyring, CLEAR.  JOIN is turned
on if a keyring is being altered.

The KEYCTL_DESCRIBE function translates the ACL back into a permissions
mask to return depending on possessor, owner, group and everyone ACEs.

It will make the following mappings:

 (1) INVAL, JOIN -> SEARCH

 (2) SET_SECURITY -> SETATTR

 (3) REVOKE -> WRITE if SETATTR isn't already set

 (4) CLEAR -> WRITE

Note that the value subsequently returned by KEYCTL_DESCRIBE may not match
the value set with KEYCTL_SETATTR.


=======
TESTING
=======

This passes the keyutils testsuite for all but a couple of tests:

 (1) tests/keyctl/dh_compute/badargs: The first wrong-key-type test now
     returns EOPNOTSUPP rather than ENOKEY as READ permission isn't removed
     if the type doesn't have ->read().  You still can't actually read the
     key.

 (2) tests/keyctl/permitting/valid: The view-other-permissions test doesn't
     work as Other has been replaced with Everyone in the ACL.

Signed-off-by: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
2019-06-27 23:03:07 +01:00
arch Merge branch 'akpm' (patches from Andrew) 2019-05-19 12:15:32 -07:00
block for-5.2/block-post-20190516 2019-05-16 19:08:15 -07:00
certs keys: Replace uid/gid/perm permissions checking with an ACL 2019-06-27 23:03:07 +01:00
crypto keys: Add a 'recurse' flag for keyring searches 2019-06-26 21:02:32 +01:00
Documentation keys: Replace uid/gid/perm permissions checking with an ACL 2019-06-27 23:03:07 +01:00
drivers keys: Replace uid/gid/perm permissions checking with an ACL 2019-06-27 23:03:07 +01:00
fs keys: Replace uid/gid/perm permissions checking with an ACL 2019-06-27 23:03:07 +01:00
include keys: Replace uid/gid/perm permissions checking with an ACL 2019-06-27 23:03:07 +01:00
init initramfs: don't free a non-existent initrd 2019-05-18 15:52:26 -07:00
ipc ipc: do cyclic id allocation for the ipc object. 2019-05-14 19:52:52 -07:00
kernel keys: Move the user and user-session keyrings to the user_namespace 2019-06-26 21:02:32 +01:00
lib keys: Replace uid/gid/perm permissions checking with an ACL 2019-06-27 23:03:07 +01:00
LICENSES LICENSES: Rename other to deprecated 2019-05-03 06:34:32 -06:00
mm Merge branch 'akpm' (patches from Andrew) 2019-05-19 12:15:32 -07:00
net keys: Replace uid/gid/perm permissions checking with an ACL 2019-06-27 23:03:07 +01:00
samples samples: guard sub-directories with CONFIG options 2019-05-18 11:29:01 +09:00
scripts kconfig: use 'else ifneq' for Makefile to improve readability 2019-05-19 09:34:35 +09:00
security keys: Replace uid/gid/perm permissions checking with an ACL 2019-06-27 23:03:07 +01:00
sound sound fixes for 5.2-rc1 2019-05-17 13:57:54 -07:00
tools Merge branch 'perf-core-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip 2019-05-19 11:20:22 -07:00
usr user/Makefile: Fix typo and capitalization in comment section 2018-12-11 00:18:03 +09:00
virt * ARM: support for SVE and Pointer Authentication in guests, PMU improvements 2019-05-17 10:33:30 -07:00
.clang-format Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/davem/net 2019-04-17 11:26:25 -07:00
.cocciconfig scripts: add Linux .cocciconfig for coccinelle 2016-07-22 12:13:39 +02:00
.get_maintainer.ignore Opt out of scripts/get_maintainer.pl 2019-05-16 10:53:40 -07:00
.gitattributes .gitattributes: set git diff driver for C source code files 2016-10-07 18:46:30 -07:00
.gitignore .gitignore: exclude .get_maintainer.ignore and .gitattributes 2019-05-18 11:49:54 +09:00
.mailmap A reasonably busy cycle for docs, including: 2019-05-08 12:42:50 -07:00
COPYING COPYING: use the new text with points to the license files 2018-03-23 12:41:45 -06:00
CREDITS Char/Misc driver patches for 5.1-rc1 2019-03-06 14:18:59 -08:00
Kbuild Kbuild updates for v5.1 2019-03-10 17:48:21 -07:00
Kconfig kconfig: move the "Executable file formats" menu to fs/Kconfig.binfmt 2018-08-02 08:06:55 +09:00
MAINTAINERS Kbuild updates for v5.2 (2nd) 2019-05-19 11:53:58 -07:00
Makefile Linux 5.2-rc1 2019-05-19 15:47:09 -07:00
README Drop all 00-INDEX files from Documentation/ 2018-09-09 15:08:58 -06:00

Linux kernel
============

There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.

In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``.  The formatted documentation can also be read online at:

    https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/

There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.

Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.