Re: [PATCH v2 3/3] virtiofsd: probe unshare(CLONE_FS) and print an error

[Stefan Hajnoczi]

On Thu, Jul 30, 2020 at 06:21:34PM -0400, Daniel Walsh wrote:
> On 7/29/20 10:40, Stefan Hajnoczi wrote:
> > On Wed, Jul 29, 2020 at 09:59:01AM +0200, Roman Mohr wrote:
> >> On Tue, Jul 28, 2020 at 3:13 PM Vivek Goyal <vgoyal@redhat.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>> On Tue, Jul 28, 2020 at 12:00:20PM +0200, Roman Mohr wrote:
> >>>> On Tue, Jul 28, 2020 at 3:07 AM misono.tomohiro@fujitsu.com <
> >>>> misono.tomohiro@fujitsu.com> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>>> Subject: [PATCH v2 3/3] virtiofsd: probe unshare(CLONE_FS) and print
> >>> an
> >>>>> error
> >> Yes they can run as root. I can tell you what we plan to do with the
> >> containerized virtiofsd: We run it as part of the user-owned pod (a set of
> >> containers).
> >> One of our main goals at the moment is to run VMs in a user-owned pod
> >> without additional privileges.
> >> So that in case the user (VM-creator/owner) enters the pod or something
> >> breaks out of the VM they are just in the unprivileged container sandbox.
> >> As part of that we try to get also rid of running containers in the
> >> user-context with the root user.
> >>
> >> One possible scenario which I could think of as being desirable from a
> >> kubevirt perspective:
> >> We would run the VM in one container and have an unprivileged
> >> virtiofsd container in parallel.
> >> This container already has its own mount namespace and it is not that
> >> critical if something manages to enter this sandbox.
> >>
> >> But we are not as far yet as getting completely rid of root right now in
> >> kubevirt, so if as a temporary step it needs root, the current proposed
> >> changes would still be very useful for us.
> > What is the issue with root in user namespaces?
> >
> > I remember a few years ago it was seen as a major security issue but
> > don't remember if container runtimes were already using user namespaces
> > back then.
> >
> > I guess the goal might be simply to minimize Linux capabilities as much
> > as possible?
> >
> > virtiofsd could nominally run with an arbitrary uid/gid but it still
> > needs the Linux capabilities that allow it to change uid/gid and
> > override file system permission checks just like the root user. Not sure
> > if there is any advantage to running with uid 1000 when you still have
> > these Linux capabilities.
> >
> > Stefan
> 
> When you run in a user namespace, virtiofsd would only have
> setuid/setgid over the range of UIDs mapped into the user namespace.  So
> if UID=0 on the host is not mapped, then the container can not create
> real UID=0 files on disk.
> 
> Similarly you can protect the user directories and any content by
> running the containers in a really high UID Mapping.

Roman, do user namespaces address your concerns about uid 0 in
containers?

Stefan

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