[PATCH 0/3] keys: play nicely with user namespaces

[Serge E. Hallyn]

Quoting David Howells (dhowells at redhat.com):
> Serge E. Hallyn <serue at us.ibm.com> wrote:
> 
> > > You can have, say, a keyring owned by UID 1, with three keys owned by UIDs
> > > 2, 3 and 4, respectively, and you could be, say, running as UID 5.
> > > 
> > > If you want to copy this keyring and these keys, do you just set the
> > > ownership of the copies to your new UID?  That might give you extra
> > > privileges.
> > 
> > Well no, I don't want to change any ownerships.
> > 
> > You're assuming I am UID 1 and own that keyring, right?
> 
> Actually, I said "you could be, say, running as UID 5".  In which case, you

oops

> wouldn't own the keyring or any of the keys.  Perhaps that's a bad example.
> 
> Assume instead you're UID 1, and so are given owner rights on the keyring (as
> opposed to group or other rights).
> 
> > And now I do a clone(CLONE_NEWUSER).  The new task will have UID 0 and no
> > access to any of those keys by virtue of being in a new user namespace.
> 
> Yes.
> 
> > So now, if I as UID 1 in the parent ns had access to the data loaded
> > into those keys, I can reload them into my new keyring.
> 
> I'm not sure what you mean by 'reload them'.
> 
> The kernel could copy the keys from the old keyring when the namespace is
> cloned, but what UID should it put on the new keys?  Your new one (UID 0)?  If
> so, that might grant you extra rights you didn't have before; also it means
> these keys now come out of your quota, whereas they didn't previously.
> 
> > Just as I could do anyway.  And if I want to, since I own the new user
> > namespace, I can instantiate uid 2 in my new user namespace and make a key
> > owned by UID 2.  Doesn't matter.
> 
> That's not what I meant.  I think we might be talking at cross-purposes.  Are
> you thinking of having userspace copy the keys across?

Right, the kernel just segregates based on user namespaces, and if
userspace wants a task in a child user namespace to have keys, it
can load them.

-serge