[PATCH 0/6] File Sealing & memfd_create()

[Andy Lutomirski]

On 04/08/2014 06:00 AM, Florian Weimer wrote:
> On 03/19/2014 08:06 PM, David Herrmann wrote:
> 
>> Unlike existing techniques that provide similar protection, sealing
>> allows
>> file-sharing without any trust-relationship. This is enforced by
>> rejecting seal
>> modifications if you don't own an exclusive reference to the given
>> file. So if
>> you own a file-descriptor, you can be sure that no-one besides you can
>> modify
>> the seals on the given file. This allows mapping shared files from
>> untrusted
>> parties without the fear of the file getting truncated or modified by an
>> attacker.
> 
> How do you keep these promises on network and FUSE file systems?  Surely
> there is still some trust involved for such descriptors?
> 
> What happens if you create a loop device on a sealed descriptor?
> 
> Why does memfd_create not create a file backed by a memory region in the
> current process?  Wouldn't this be a far more generic primitive?
> Creating aliases of memory regions would be interesting for many things
> (not just libffi bypassing SELinux-enforced NX restrictions :-).

If you write a patch to prevent selinux from enforcing NX, I will ack
that patch with all my might.  I don't know how far it would get me, but
I think that selinux has no business going anywhere near execmem.

Adding a clone mode to mremap might be a better bet.  But memfd solves
that problem, too, albeit messily.

--Andy