move RLIMIT_NPROC check from set_user() to do_execve_common()

The patch http://lkml.org/lkml/2003/7/13/226 introduced an RLIMIT_NPROC
check in set_user() to check for NPROC exceeding via setuid() and
similar functions.

Before the check there was a possibility to greatly exceed the allowed
number of processes by an unprivileged user if the program relied on
rlimit only.  But the check created new security threat: many poorly
written programs simply don't check setuid() return code and believe it
cannot fail if executed with root privileges.  So, the check is removed
in this patch because of too often privilege escalations related to
buggy programs.

The NPROC can still be enforced in the common code flow of daemons
spawning user processes.  Most of daemons do fork()+setuid()+execve().
The check introduced in execve() (1) enforces the same limit as in
setuid() and (2) doesn't create similar security issues.

Neil Brown suggested to track what specific process has exceeded the
limit by setting PF_NPROC_EXCEEDED process flag.  With the change only
this process would fail on execve(), and other processes' execve()
behaviour is not changed.

Solar Designer suggested to re-check whether NPROC limit is still
exceeded at the moment of execve().  If the process was sleeping for
days between set*uid() and execve(), and the NPROC counter step down
under the limit, the defered execve() failure because NPROC limit was
exceeded days ago would be unexpected.  If the limit is not exceeded
anymore, we clear the flag on successful calls to execve() and fork().

The flag is also cleared on successful calls to set_user() as the limit
was exceeded for the previous user, not the current one.

Similar check was introduced in -ow patches (without the process flag).

v3 - clear PF_NPROC_EXCEEDED on successful calls to set_user().

Reviewed-by: James Morris <jmorris@namei.org>
Signed-off-by: Vasiliy Kulikov <segoon@openwall.com>
Acked-by: NeilBrown <neilb@suse.de>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

1 files changed, 17 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/fs/exec.c b/fs/exec.c
index da80612..25dcbe5 100644
--- a/fs/exec.c
+++ b/fs/exec.c
@@ -1459,6 +1459,23 @@ static int do_execve_common(const char *filename,
 	struct files_struct *displaced;
 	bool clear_in_exec;
 	int retval;
+	const struct cred *cred = current_cred();
+
+	/*
+	 * We move the actual failure in case of RLIMIT_NPROC excess from
+	 * set*uid() to execve() because too many poorly written programs
+	 * don't check setuid() return code.  Here we additionally recheck
+	 * whether NPROC limit is still exceeded.
+	 */
+	if ((current->flags & PF_NPROC_EXCEEDED) &&
+	    atomic_read(&cred->user->processes) > rlimit(RLIMIT_NPROC)) {
+		retval = -EAGAIN;
+		goto out_ret;
+	}
+
+	/* We're below the limit (still or again), so we don't want to make
+	 * further execve() calls fail. */
+	current->flags &= ~PF_NPROC_EXCEEDED;
 
 	retval = unshare_files(&displaced);
 	if (retval)