Hello Sean,

On Monday, September 17, 2018 11:23:29 AM EDT Sean wrote:
> I think the gist of what Trevor's driving at is the "Spirit of the Rule"
> which requires privilege escalation to pass an authentication challenge.
> He is using 'password' but the challenge could be satisfied by a number of
> methods - pkcs#11 token, ssh-key, etc.
> 
> With sudo, NOPASSWD rules are not compliant.  Polkit, if it is a gateway
> for privilege escalation, should follow the spirit of this rule, for the
> same reasons it exists for sudo.

Right. I agree. However, you can modify your pam stack to allow root 
escalation without a password, too. You just don't do it. I think that its 
important to define the expected rules. 

But what I was saying is that the language is so rich that you cannot try to 
parse it and reason whether it is good or not. I had this same discussion way 
back when polkit was introduced to Fedora back in Nov 2012:

https://marc.info/?l=fedora-devel-list&m=135273468717951&w=2

I tried to get some changes in place back then but not enough people 
understood that auditing the security posture is a must.

In any event, I think the path forward is to look for the polkit enabled 
software that is on a server install, audit the code, if there is no code - 
write it. Then we can get the paths and hashs and create tests.

-Steve


> On Mon, Sep 17, 2018 at 11:07 AM Steve Grubb <[email protected]> wrote:
> > On Monday, September 17, 2018 10:50:28 AM EDT Trevor Vaughan wrote:
> > > Just tinkering around:
> > > 
> > > If you have /etc/polkit/rules.d/10-nopasswd_hack.rules with the
> > > following
> > > content:
> > > 
> > > polkit.addRule(function(action, subject) {
> > > 
> > >   if (action.id == "org.freedesktop.policykit.exec" &&
> > > 
> > > subject.isInGroup("wheel"))
> > > 
> > >   {
> > >   
> > >     return polkit.Result.YES;
> > >   
> > >   }
> > > 
> > > });
> > > 
> > > Then you can run the following to get a root shell with absolutely no
> > > password prompt.
> > > 
> > > pkexec -u root /bin/bash
> > 
> > Yes. But you need root to put it there. My thoughts on polkit rules is
> > that
> > about all you can do is sha256 hash the files. The language is so complex
> > that parsing it is impossible. You can say what should exist and what its
> > hash should be. It goes downhill from there.
> > 
> > -Steve
> > 
> > > On Mon, Sep 17, 2018 at 10:19 AM Trevor Vaughan
> > > <[email protected]>
> > > 
> > > wrote:
> > > > On a default installation? They can't but I think they can twiddle
> > 
> > things
> > 
> > > > in NetworkManager from the GUI IIRC.
> > > > 
> > > > But they also can't get to root via 'sudo' and we have rules for
> > > > that.
> > > > 
> > > > Polkit is basically sudo for DBus stuff and we have rules around what
> > > > should, and should not, be done with sudo so I guess I expect the
> > > > same
> > > > thing with polkit.
> > > > 
> > > > For instance, I could use pkexec to run arbitrary commands as root
> > > > without
> > > > a password if I have a rule set up for it. But, unlike sudo, there
> > 
> > isn't
> > 
> > > > a
> > > > rule saying not to do that and a method to check for it.
> > > > 
> > > > Thanks,
> > > > 
> > > > Trevor
> > > > 
> > > > On Mon, Sep 17, 2018 at 9:45 AM Thomas Haller <[email protected]>
> > 
> > wrote:
> > > >> On Mon, 2018-09-17 at 09:19 -0400, Trevor Vaughan wrote:
> > > >> > Otherwise, there's a
> > > >> > lovely gaping hole in the system security that can effectively be
> > > >> > used to run pretty much anything with root permissions.
> > > >> 
> > > >> Hi,
> > > >> 
> > > >> This makes me wonder. How can an unpriviledged user get root
> > > >> permissions on a default installation of RHEL? Either in general, or
> > > >> specifically using NetworkManager.
> > > >> 
> > > >> 
> > > >> best,
> > > >> Thomas
> > > > 
> > > > --
> > > > Trevor Vaughan
> > > > Vice President, Onyx Point, Inc
> > > > (410) 541-6699 x788
> > > > 
> > > > -- This account not approved for unencrypted proprietary information
> > > > --
> > 
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