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In Unix-like systems, user-level activities are implemented by running processes. Most Unix systems support a ``thread'' as a separate concept; threads share memory inside a process, and the system scheduler actually schedules threads. Linux does this differently (and in my opinion uses a better approach): there is no essential difference between a thread and a process. Instead, in Linux, when a process creates another process it can choose what resources are shared (e.g., memory can be shared). The Linux kernel then performs optimizations to get thread-level speeds; see clone(2) for more information. It's worth noting that the Linux kernel developers tend to use the word ``task'', not ``thread'' or ``process'', but the external documentation tends to use the word process (so I'll use the term ``process'' here). When programming a multi-threaded application, it's usually better to use one of the standard thread libraries that hide these differences. Not only does this make threading more portable, but some libraries provide an additional level of indirection, by implementing more than one application-level thread as a single operating system thread; this can provide some improved performance on some systems for some applications.
Here are typical attributes associated with each process in a Unix-like system:
RUID, RGID - real UID and GID of the user on whose behalf the process is running
EUID, EGID - effective UID and GID used for privilege checks (except for the filesystem)
SUID, SGID - Saved UID and GID; used to support switching permissions ``on and off'' as discussed below. Not all Unix-like systems support this, but the vast majority do (including Linux and Solaris); if you want to check if a given system implements this option in the POSIX standard, you can use sysconf(2) to determine if _POSIX_SAVED_IDS is in effect.
supplemental groups - a list of groups (GIDs) in which this user has membership. In the original version 7 Unix, this didn't exist - processes were only a member of one group at a time, and a special command had to be executed to change that group. BSD added support for a list of groups in each process, which is more flexible, and this addition is now widely implemented (including by Linux and Solaris).
umask - a set of bits determining the default access control settings when a new filesystem object is created; see umask(2).
scheduling parameters - each process has a scheduling policy, and those with the default policy SCHED_OTHER have the additional parameters nice, priority, and counter. See sched_setscheduler(2) for more information.
limits - per-process resource limits (see below).
filesystem root - the process' idea of where the root filesystem ("/") begins; see chroot(2).
Here are less-common attributes associated with processes:
FSUID, FSGID - UID and GID used for filesystem access checks; this is usually equal to the EUID and EGID respectively. This is a Linux-unique attribute.
capabilities - POSIX capability information; there are actually three sets of capabilities on a process: the effective, inheritable, and permitted capabilities. See below for more information on POSIX capabilities. Linux kernel version 2.2 and greater support this; some other Unix-like systems do too, but it's not as widespread.
In Linux, if you really need to know exactly what attributes are associated with each process, the most definitive source is the Linux source code, in particular /usr/include/linux/sched.h's definition of task_struct.
The portable way to create new processes it use the fork(2) call. BSD introduced a variant called vfork(2) as an optimization technique. The bottom line with vfork(2) is simple: don't use it if you can avoid it. See Section 8.6 for more information.
Linux supports the Linux-unique clone(2) call. This call works like fork(2), but allows specification of which resources should be shared (e.g., memory, file descriptors, etc.). Various BSD systems implement an rfork() system call (originally developed in Plan9); it has different semantics but the same general idea (it also creates a process with tighter control over what is shared). Portable programs shouldn't use these calls directly, if possible; as noted earlier, they should instead rely on threading libraries that use such calls to implement threads.
This book is not a full tutorial on writing programs, so I will skip widely-available information handling processes. You can see the documentation for wait(2), exit(2), and so on for more information.
POSIX capabilities are sets of bits that permit splitting of the privileges typically held by root into a larger set of more specific privileges. POSIX capabilities are defined by a draft IEEE standard; they're not unique to Linux but they're not universally supported by other Unix-like systems either. Linux kernel 2.0 did not support POSIX capabilities, while version 2.2 added support for POSIX capabilities to processes. When Linux documentation (including this one) says ``requires root privilege'', in nearly all cases it really means ``requires a capability'' as documented in the capability documentation. If you need to know the specific capability required, look it up in the capability documentation.
In Linux, the eventual intent is to permit capabilities to be attached to files in the filesystem; as of this writing, however, this is not yet supported. There is support for transferring capabilities, but this is disabled by default. Linux version 2.2.11 added a feature that makes capabilities more directly useful, called the ``capability bounding set''. The capability bounding set is a list of capabilities that are allowed to be held by any process on the system (otherwise, only the special init process can hold it). If a capability does not appear in the bounding set, it may not be exercised by any process, no matter how privileged. This feature can be used to, for example, disable kernel module loading. A sample tool that takes advantage of this is LCAP at http://pweb.netcom.com/~spoon/lcap/.
More information about POSIX capabilities is available at ftp://linux.kernel.org/pub/linux/libs/security/linux-privs.
Processes may be created using fork(2), the non-recommended vfork(2), or the Linux-unique clone(2); all of these system calls duplicate the existing process, creating two processes out of it. A process can execute a different program by calling execve(2), or various front-ends to it (for example, see exec(3), system(3), and popen(3)).
When a program is executed, and its file has its setuid or setgid bit set, the process' EUID or EGID (respectively) is usually set to the file's value. This functionality was the source of an old Unix security weakness when used to support setuid or setgid scripts, due to a race condition. Between the time the kernel opens the file to see which interpreter to run, and when the (now-set-id) interpreter turns around and reopens the file to interpret it, an attacker might change the file (directly or via symbolic links).
Different Unix-like systems handle the security issue for setuid scripts in different ways. Some systems, such as Linux, completely ignore the setuid and setgid bits when executing scripts, which is clearly a safe approach. Most modern releases of SysVr4 and BSD 4.4 use a different approach to avoid the kernel race condition. On these systems, when the kernel passes the name of the set-id script to open to the interpreter, rather than using a pathname (which would permit the race condition) it instead passes the filename /dev/fd/3. This is a special file already opened on the script, so that there can be no race condition for attackers to exploit. Even on these systems I recommend against using the setuid/setgid shell scripts language for secure programs, as discussed below.
In some cases a process can affect the various UID and GID values; see setuid(2), seteuid(2), setreuid(2), and the Linux-unique setfsuid(2). In particular the saved user id (SUID) attribute is there to permit trusted programs to temporarily switch UIDs. Unix-like systems supporting the SUID use the following rules: If the RUID is changed, or the EUID is set to a value not equal to the RUID, the SUID is set to the new EUID. Unprivileged users can set their EUID from their SUID, the RUID to the EUID, and the EUID to the RUID.
The Linux-unique FSUID process attribute is intended to permit programs like the NFS server to limit themselves to only the filesystem rights of some given UID without giving that UID permission to send signals to the process. Whenever the EUID is changed, the FSUID is changed to the new EUID value; the FSUID value can be set separately using setfsuid(2), a Linux-unique call. Note that non-root callers can only set FSUID to the current RUID, EUID, SEUID, or current FSUID values.