security: Minor improvements to no_new_privs documentation

The documentation didn't actually mention how to enable no_new_privs.
This also adds a note about possible interactions between
no_new_privs and LSMs (i.e. why teaching systemd to set no_new_privs
is not necessarily a good idea), and it references the new docs
from include/linux/prctl.h.

Suggested-by: Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
Signed-off-by: Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net>
Acked-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
Signed-off-by: James Morris <james.l.morris@oracle.com>

diff --git a/Documentation/prctl/no_new_privs.txt b/Documentation/prctl/no_new_privs.txt
index cb705ec69abe9be084a10d71846d678385df95fd..f7be84fba9105cc21ce8c121a040ad42c60be1de 100644 (file)
--- a/Documentation/prctl/no_new_privs.txt
+++ b/Documentation/prctl/no_new_privs.txt
@@ -25,6 +25,13 @@ bits will no longer change the uid or gid; file capabilities will not
 add to the permitted set, and LSMs will not relax constraints after
 execve.
 
+To set no_new_privs, use prctl(PR_SET_NO_NEW_PRIVS, 1, 0, 0, 0).
+
+Be careful, though: LSMs might also not tighten constraints on exec
+in no_new_privs mode.  (This means that setting up a general-purpose
+service launcher to set no_new_privs before execing daemons may
+interfere with LSM-based sandboxing.)
+
 Note that no_new_privs does not prevent privilege changes that do not
 involve execve.  An appropriately privileged task can still call
 setuid(2) and receive SCM_RIGHTS datagrams.

diff --git a/include/linux/prctl.h b/include/linux/prctl.h
index 3988012255dc5bf0562758d703f4124656dbfc31..289760f424aaa3247d2e4f66841334c67295c9ef 100644 (file)
--- a/include/linux/prctl.h
+++ b/include/linux/prctl.h
@@ -141,6 +141,8 @@
  * Changing LSM security domain is considered a new privilege.  So, for example,
  * asking selinux for a specific new context (e.g. with runcon) will result
  * in execve returning -EPERM.
+ *
+ * See Documentation/prctl/no_new_privs.txt for more details.
  */
 #define PR_SET_NO_NEW_PRIVS    38
 #define PR_GET_NO_NEW_PRIVS    39