51 Commits (c59a3da1342ff456e5123361739bc331446cda21)

Author	SHA1	Message	Date
Miklos Szeredi	d8a5ba4545	[PATCH] FUSE - core ... This patch adds FUSE core. This contains the following files: o inode.c - superblock operations (alloc_inode, destroy_inode, read_inode, clear_inode, put_super, show_options) - registers FUSE filesystem o fuse_i.h - private header file Requirements ============ The most important difference between orinary filesystems and FUSE is the fact, that the filesystem data/metadata is provided by a userspace process run with the privileges of the mount "owner" instead of the kernel, or some remote entity usually running with elevated privileges. The security implication of this is that a non-privileged user must not be able to use this capability to compromise the system. Obvious requirements arising from this are: - mount owner should not be able to get elevated privileges with the help of the mounted filesystem - mount owner should not be able to induce undesired behavior in other users' or the super user's processes - mount owner should not get illegitimate access to information from other users' and the super user's processes These are currently ensured with the following constraints: 1) mount is only allowed to directory or file which the mount owner can modify without limitation (write access + no sticky bit for directories) 2) nosuid,nodev mount options are forced 3) any process running with fsuid different from the owner is denied all access to the filesystem 1) and 2) are ensured by the "fusermount" mount utility which is a setuid root application doing the actual mount operation. 3) is ensured by a check in the permission() method in kernel I started thinking about doing 3) in a different way because Christoph H. made a big deal out of it, saying that FUSE is unacceptable into mainline in this form. The suggested use of private namespaces would be OK, but in their current form have many limitations that make their use impractical (as discussed in this thread). Suggested improvements that would address these limitations: - implement shared subtrees - allow a process to join an existing namespace (make namespaces first-class objects) - implement the namespace creation/joining in a PAM module With all that in place the check of owner against current->fsuid may be removed from the FUSE kernel module, without compromising the security requirements. Suid programs still interesting questions, since they get access even to the private namespace causing some information leak (exact order/timing of filesystem operations performed), giving some ptrace-like capabilities to unprivileged users. BTW this problem is not strictly limited to the namespace approach, since suid programs setting fsuid and accessing users' files will succeed with the current approach too. Signed-off-by: Miklos Szeredi <miklos@szeredi.hu> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>	20 years ago