Re: [PATCH 2.5.30] Allow tasks to share credentials

[Linus Torvalds]

On Fri, 2 Aug 2002, Dave McCracken wrote:
>
> This patch provides the ability to share credentials (uid, gid,
> capabilities) between tasks, using a clone() flag.

I worry about the lack of locking here.

Maybe it's the right thing to do, I don't really know.

But I _know_, for example, that this is just a horrid security hole the
way it is now - the execve() path doesn't create a unique "cred"
structure, so if you execve() a suid binary from a CLONE_CRED thread, the
other threads get the suid'ness and can do whatever they want.

At the very least, it should disallow suid exec's when

	atomic_read(&current->cred->count) > 1

which is the same approach we do wrt other shared state (ie disallow a
CLONE_FILES thing from doing a suid execve etc).

The alternative is to just allocate a new cred structure on execve.

As-is this patch is way way too dangerous. You can trivially create a root
hole by doing

	if (!clone(CLONE_CRED)) {
		execve("su");
		exit(1);
	}

	..this thread now also got root..

> There is no lock around the credential accesses, but from my analysis none
> is needed.

You may be right. I don't see any huge reason for it, but see above on
other fundamental problems.

		Linus