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Re: [RFC PATCH] newrole suid breakdown

From: Steve Grubb <sgrubb_at_redhat.com>
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2006 17:48:06 -0400


On Thursday 05 October 2006 16:47, Michael C Thompson wrote:
> AFAIK, we can't call audit without getting a failure, and I would really
> rather not suppress those errors.

There is a library function get_auditfail_action where admins can say what the expected behavior should be. There is a man page for it.

However, why would sending an audit message fail? newrole is setuid, that's why I did a code review last winter...and we can do another code review if people still aren't sure. pam is already used in several setuid programs, so I hope that is not the issue.

> It would be possible to add a check to make sure that either we have
> CAP_AUDIT_WRITE
This is something simple to do and would solve your problem.

> or euid=0 or something, but I'm not really fond of that.

By checking euid, you are really hoping that 0 has CAP_AUDIT_WRITE, so why not check the capability since that's what matters.

> RedHat: is there going to be a scenario where you are sending out this
> package on a system which doesn't have an audit-aware kernel?

No.

> If so, we can probably do the euid check and if euid is non-zero, we
> skip calling to audit. The fallout of that is you would see audit
> records when root, and only root, uses newrole. Again, I am not fond of
> this solution.

Me neither.

> Is there no sane way to check if an app is suid? Because this would
> relieve some of the headaches from this.

I don't think checking suid is the right thing. Checking the capability is.

-Steve

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Received on Thu 5 Oct 2006 - 17:47:16 EDT
 

Date Posted: Jan 15, 2009 | Last Modified: Jan 15, 2009 | Last Reviewed: Jan 15, 2009

 
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