Am 12.10.2010 14:56, Anders Blomdell wrote:
> On 2010-10-12 12.23, Anders Blomdell wrote:
>> On 2010-10-12 11.25, Anders Blomdell wrote:
>>> On 2010-10-11 18.58, Jan Kiszka wrote:
>>>> Am 11.10.2010 18:49, Gilles Chanteperdrix wrote:
>>>>> Jan Kiszka wrote:
>>>>>> Am 11.10.2010 18:23, Gilles Chanteperdrix wrote:
>>>>>>> Jan Kiszka wrote:
>>>>>>>> enabling the Xenomai watchdog should provide a reasonably safe&secure
>>>>>>>> environment.
>>>>>>> AFAIK, the BIG FAT warning at the bottom of this page still applies. You
>>>>>>> can make an environment with no hardware lockups, but secure, I do not
>>>>>>> think so. We do not know how Xenomai APIs could be exploited for a
>>>>>>> non-root user to become root.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> For sure, no one audited the interface for security so far. There is no
>>>>>> hole in design that comes to my mind ATM, but I would be surprised as
>>>>>> well if you couldn't develop any exploit for some bug or missing check.
>>>>>> Still, there is a huge difference between giving anyone root access and
>>>>>> confining Xenomai access this way.
>>>>>
>>>>> I was just reacting to "reasonably secure". The experience proves that
>>>>> if you do not do any particular effort for security, then your code is
>>>>> not secure. Not even reasonably.
>>>>
>>>> This is no black-or-white domain, and I wouldn't say we spend no effort
>>>> on security at all. We do have interest in making the userspace APIs
>>>> robust which addresses security up to a certain level as well.
>>>>
>>>> What is still definitely not secure, though, is RTnet as it consequently
>>>> lacks any kind of check on user-passed addresses. But that's not
>>>> Xenomai's fault (rather mine).
>>> If I understand manpages and code correctly, xenomai is insecure by design 
>>> (not
>>> a major problem here, I hope), but I had hoped to be able to avoid 
>>> CAP_SYS_RAWIO
>>> which I think is the biggest security problem (access to /proc/kcore IS 
>>> scary),
>>> but since CAP_SYS_NICE implies CAP_SYS_RAWIO via shadow.c:
>>>     if (!capable(CAP_SYS_NICE) &&
>>>         (xn_gid_arg == -1 || !in_group_p(xn_gid_arg)))
>>>         return -EPERM;
>>>
>>>      wrap_raise_cap(CAP_SYS_NICE);
>>>      wrap_raise_cap(CAP_IPC_LOCK);
>>>      wrap_raise_cap(CAP_SYS_RAWIO);
>>>
>>> I will go for the group thing (simple and totally insecure) for now, and put
>>> some more thought into it later on.
>> Well, obviously this feature is somewhat broken:
>>
>>> testprog
>> Xenomai: binding failed: Cannot allocate memory.
>>
>> This is what syslog says:
>> Xenomai: testprog[2367] cannot map MAYDAY page
>>
>> Running as root works as it should.
> CAP_DAC_OVERRIDE fixes this issue (and how safe is that :-( )

This is not a Xenomai issue but a system misconfiguration. Installing
the Xenomai-provided udev scripts will fix it (ie. grant your Xenomai
group access to /dev/rtheap).

> 
> How necessary are CAP_SYS_RAWIO and CAP_DAC_OVERRIDE [the two capabiltities i
> think have the most severe security implications] when main has started 
> running,
> i.e. could I drop them after initialization and still do something useful?

In the absence of user space drivers, you should be able to live without
CAP_SYS_RAWIO. Not sure, though, if there is a way to overcome
CAP_SYS_RAWIO for user space TSC access on ARM as Gilles mentioned. But
if that turns out to be the only remaining problem, making this
capability optional (at least on !=ARM) should be no big deal IMHO.

Jan

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