| 1 | .. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0 |
| 2 | .. Copyright © 2017-2020 Mickaël Salaün <mic@digikod.net> |
| 3 | .. Copyright © 2019-2020 ANSSI |
| 4 | .. Copyright © 2021-2022 Microsoft Corporation |
| 5 | |
| 6 | ===================================== |
| 7 | Landlock: unprivileged access control |
| 8 | ===================================== |
| 9 | |
| 10 | :Author: Mickaël Salaün |
| 11 | :Date: March 2025 |
| 12 | |
| 13 | The goal of Landlock is to enable restriction of ambient rights (e.g. global |
| 14 | filesystem or network access) for a set of processes. Because Landlock |
| 15 | is a stackable LSM, it makes it possible to create safe security sandboxes as |
| 16 | new security layers in addition to the existing system-wide access-controls. |
| 17 | This kind of sandbox is expected to help mitigate the security impact of bugs or |
| 18 | unexpected/malicious behaviors in user space applications. Landlock empowers |
| 19 | any process, including unprivileged ones, to securely restrict themselves. |
| 20 | |
| 21 | We can quickly make sure that Landlock is enabled in the running system by |
| 22 | looking for "landlock: Up and running" in kernel logs (as root): |
| 23 | ``dmesg | grep landlock || journalctl -kb -g landlock`` . |
| 24 | Developers can also easily check for Landlock support with a |
| 25 | :ref:`related system call <landlock_abi_versions>`. |
| 26 | If Landlock is not currently supported, we need to |
| 27 | :ref:`configure the kernel appropriately <kernel_support>`. |
| 28 | |
| 29 | Landlock rules |
| 30 | ============== |
| 31 | |
| 32 | A Landlock rule describes an action on an object which the process intends to |
| 33 | perform. A set of rules is aggregated in a ruleset, which can then restrict |
| 34 | the thread enforcing it, and its future children. |
| 35 | |
| 36 | The two existing types of rules are: |
| 37 | |
| 38 | Filesystem rules |
| 39 | For these rules, the object is a file hierarchy, |
| 40 | and the related filesystem actions are defined with |
| 41 | `filesystem access rights`. |
| 42 | |
| 43 | Network rules (since ABI v4) |
| 44 | For these rules, the object is a TCP port, |
| 45 | and the related actions are defined with `network access rights`. |
| 46 | |
| 47 | Defining and enforcing a security policy |
| 48 | ---------------------------------------- |
| 49 | |
| 50 | We first need to define the ruleset that will contain our rules. |
| 51 | |
| 52 | For this example, the ruleset will contain rules that only allow filesystem |
| 53 | read actions and establish a specific TCP connection. Filesystem write |
| 54 | actions and other TCP actions will be denied. |
| 55 | |
| 56 | The ruleset then needs to handle both these kinds of actions. This is |
| 57 | required for backward and forward compatibility (i.e. the kernel and user |
| 58 | space may not know each other's supported restrictions), hence the need |
| 59 | to be explicit about the denied-by-default access rights. |
| 60 | |
| 61 | .. code-block:: c |
| 62 | |
| 63 | struct landlock_ruleset_attr ruleset_attr = { |
| 64 | .handled_access_fs = |
| 65 | LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_EXECUTE | |
| 66 | LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_WRITE_FILE | |
| 67 | LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_READ_FILE | |
| 68 | LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_READ_DIR | |
| 69 | LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_REMOVE_DIR | |
| 70 | LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_REMOVE_FILE | |
| 71 | LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_MAKE_CHAR | |
| 72 | LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_MAKE_DIR | |
| 73 | LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_MAKE_REG | |
| 74 | LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_MAKE_SOCK | |
| 75 | LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_MAKE_FIFO | |
| 76 | LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_MAKE_BLOCK | |
| 77 | LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_MAKE_SYM | |
| 78 | LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_REFER | |
| 79 | LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_TRUNCATE | |
| 80 | LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_IOCTL_DEV, |
| 81 | .handled_access_net = |
| 82 | LANDLOCK_ACCESS_NET_BIND_TCP | |
| 83 | LANDLOCK_ACCESS_NET_CONNECT_TCP, |
| 84 | .scoped = |
| 85 | LANDLOCK_SCOPE_ABSTRACT_UNIX_SOCKET | |
| 86 | LANDLOCK_SCOPE_SIGNAL, |
| 87 | }; |
| 88 | |
| 89 | Because we may not know which kernel version an application will be executed |
| 90 | on, it is safer to follow a best-effort security approach. Indeed, we |
| 91 | should try to protect users as much as possible whatever the kernel they are |
| 92 | using. |
| 93 | |
| 94 | To be compatible with older Linux versions, we detect the available Landlock ABI |
| 95 | version, and only use the available subset of access rights: |
| 96 | |
| 97 | .. code-block:: c |
| 98 | |
| 99 | int abi; |
| 100 | |
| 101 | abi = landlock_create_ruleset(NULL, 0, LANDLOCK_CREATE_RULESET_VERSION); |
| 102 | if (abi < 0) { |
| 103 | /* Degrades gracefully if Landlock is not handled. */ |
| 104 | perror("The running kernel does not enable to use Landlock"); |
| 105 | return 0; |
| 106 | } |
| 107 | switch (abi) { |
| 108 | case 1: |
| 109 | /* Removes LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_REFER for ABI < 2 */ |
| 110 | ruleset_attr.handled_access_fs &= ~LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_REFER; |
| 111 | __attribute__((fallthrough)); |
| 112 | case 2: |
| 113 | /* Removes LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_TRUNCATE for ABI < 3 */ |
| 114 | ruleset_attr.handled_access_fs &= ~LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_TRUNCATE; |
| 115 | __attribute__((fallthrough)); |
| 116 | case 3: |
| 117 | /* Removes network support for ABI < 4 */ |
| 118 | ruleset_attr.handled_access_net &= |
| 119 | ~(LANDLOCK_ACCESS_NET_BIND_TCP | |
| 120 | LANDLOCK_ACCESS_NET_CONNECT_TCP); |
| 121 | __attribute__((fallthrough)); |
| 122 | case 4: |
| 123 | /* Removes LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_IOCTL_DEV for ABI < 5 */ |
| 124 | ruleset_attr.handled_access_fs &= ~LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_IOCTL_DEV; |
| 125 | __attribute__((fallthrough)); |
| 126 | case 5: |
| 127 | /* Removes LANDLOCK_SCOPE_* for ABI < 6 */ |
| 128 | ruleset_attr.scoped &= ~(LANDLOCK_SCOPE_ABSTRACT_UNIX_SOCKET | |
| 129 | LANDLOCK_SCOPE_SIGNAL); |
| 130 | } |
| 131 | |
| 132 | This enables the creation of an inclusive ruleset that will contain our rules. |
| 133 | |
| 134 | .. code-block:: c |
| 135 | |
| 136 | int ruleset_fd; |
| 137 | |
| 138 | ruleset_fd = landlock_create_ruleset(&ruleset_attr, sizeof(ruleset_attr), 0); |
| 139 | if (ruleset_fd < 0) { |
| 140 | perror("Failed to create a ruleset"); |
| 141 | return 1; |
| 142 | } |
| 143 | |
| 144 | We can now add a new rule to this ruleset thanks to the returned file |
| 145 | descriptor referring to this ruleset. The rule will only allow reading the |
| 146 | file hierarchy ``/usr``. Without another rule, write actions would then be |
| 147 | denied by the ruleset. To add ``/usr`` to the ruleset, we open it with the |
| 148 | ``O_PATH`` flag and fill the &struct landlock_path_beneath_attr with this file |
| 149 | descriptor. |
| 150 | |
| 151 | .. code-block:: c |
| 152 | |
| 153 | int err; |
| 154 | struct landlock_path_beneath_attr path_beneath = { |
| 155 | .allowed_access = |
| 156 | LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_EXECUTE | |
| 157 | LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_READ_FILE | |
| 158 | LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_READ_DIR, |
| 159 | }; |
| 160 | |
| 161 | path_beneath.parent_fd = open("/usr", O_PATH | O_CLOEXEC); |
| 162 | if (path_beneath.parent_fd < 0) { |
| 163 | perror("Failed to open file"); |
| 164 | close(ruleset_fd); |
| 165 | return 1; |
| 166 | } |
| 167 | err = landlock_add_rule(ruleset_fd, LANDLOCK_RULE_PATH_BENEATH, |
| 168 | &path_beneath, 0); |
| 169 | close(path_beneath.parent_fd); |
| 170 | if (err) { |
| 171 | perror("Failed to update ruleset"); |
| 172 | close(ruleset_fd); |
| 173 | return 1; |
| 174 | } |
| 175 | |
| 176 | It may also be required to create rules following the same logic as explained |
| 177 | for the ruleset creation, by filtering access rights according to the Landlock |
| 178 | ABI version. In this example, this is not required because all of the requested |
| 179 | ``allowed_access`` rights are already available in ABI 1. |
| 180 | |
| 181 | For network access-control, we can add a set of rules that allow to use a port |
| 182 | number for a specific action: HTTPS connections. |
| 183 | |
| 184 | .. code-block:: c |
| 185 | |
| 186 | struct landlock_net_port_attr net_port = { |
| 187 | .allowed_access = LANDLOCK_ACCESS_NET_CONNECT_TCP, |
| 188 | .port = 443, |
| 189 | }; |
| 190 | |
| 191 | err = landlock_add_rule(ruleset_fd, LANDLOCK_RULE_NET_PORT, |
| 192 | &net_port, 0); |
| 193 | |
| 194 | The next step is to restrict the current thread from gaining more privileges |
| 195 | (e.g. through a SUID binary). We now have a ruleset with the first rule |
| 196 | allowing read access to ``/usr`` while denying all other handled accesses for |
| 197 | the filesystem, and a second rule allowing HTTPS connections. |
| 198 | |
| 199 | .. code-block:: c |
| 200 | |
| 201 | if (prctl(PR_SET_NO_NEW_PRIVS, 1, 0, 0, 0)) { |
| 202 | perror("Failed to restrict privileges"); |
| 203 | close(ruleset_fd); |
| 204 | return 1; |
| 205 | } |
| 206 | |
| 207 | The current thread is now ready to sandbox itself with the ruleset. |
| 208 | |
| 209 | .. code-block:: c |
| 210 | |
| 211 | if (landlock_restrict_self(ruleset_fd, 0)) { |
| 212 | perror("Failed to enforce ruleset"); |
| 213 | close(ruleset_fd); |
| 214 | return 1; |
| 215 | } |
| 216 | close(ruleset_fd); |
| 217 | |
| 218 | If the ``landlock_restrict_self`` system call succeeds, the current thread is |
| 219 | now restricted and this policy will be enforced on all its subsequently created |
| 220 | children as well. Once a thread is landlocked, there is no way to remove its |
| 221 | security policy; only adding more restrictions is allowed. These threads are |
| 222 | now in a new Landlock domain, which is a merger of their parent one (if any) |
| 223 | with the new ruleset. |
| 224 | |
| 225 | Full working code can be found in `samples/landlock/sandboxer.c`_. |
| 226 | |
| 227 | Good practices |
| 228 | -------------- |
| 229 | |
| 230 | It is recommended to set access rights to file hierarchy leaves as much as |
| 231 | possible. For instance, it is better to be able to have ``~/doc/`` as a |
| 232 | read-only hierarchy and ``~/tmp/`` as a read-write hierarchy, compared to |
| 233 | ``~/`` as a read-only hierarchy and ``~/tmp/`` as a read-write hierarchy. |
| 234 | Following this good practice leads to self-sufficient hierarchies that do not |
| 235 | depend on their location (i.e. parent directories). This is particularly |
| 236 | relevant when we want to allow linking or renaming. Indeed, having consistent |
| 237 | access rights per directory enables changing the location of such directories |
| 238 | without relying on the destination directory access rights (except those that |
| 239 | are required for this operation, see ``LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_REFER`` |
| 240 | documentation). |
| 241 | |
| 242 | Having self-sufficient hierarchies also helps to tighten the required access |
| 243 | rights to the minimal set of data. This also helps avoid sinkhole directories, |
| 244 | i.e. directories where data can be linked to but not linked from. However, |
| 245 | this depends on data organization, which might not be controlled by developers. |
| 246 | In this case, granting read-write access to ``~/tmp/``, instead of write-only |
| 247 | access, would potentially allow moving ``~/tmp/`` to a non-readable directory |
| 248 | and still keep the ability to list the content of ``~/tmp/``. |
| 249 | |
| 250 | Layers of file path access rights |
| 251 | --------------------------------- |
| 252 | |
| 253 | Each time a thread enforces a ruleset on itself, it updates its Landlock domain |
| 254 | with a new layer of policy. This complementary policy is stacked with any |
| 255 | other rulesets potentially already restricting this thread. A sandboxed thread |
| 256 | can then safely add more constraints to itself with a new enforced ruleset. |
| 257 | |
| 258 | One policy layer grants access to a file path if at least one of its rules |
| 259 | encountered on the path grants the access. A sandboxed thread can only access |
| 260 | a file path if all its enforced policy layers grant the access as well as all |
| 261 | the other system access controls (e.g. filesystem DAC, other LSM policies, |
| 262 | etc.). |
| 263 | |
| 264 | Bind mounts and OverlayFS |
| 265 | ------------------------- |
| 266 | |
| 267 | Landlock enables restricting access to file hierarchies, which means that these |
| 268 | access rights can be propagated with bind mounts (cf. |
| 269 | Documentation/filesystems/sharedsubtree.rst) but not with |
| 270 | Documentation/filesystems/overlayfs.rst. |
| 271 | |
| 272 | A bind mount mirrors a source file hierarchy to a destination. The destination |
| 273 | hierarchy is then composed of the exact same files, on which Landlock rules can |
| 274 | be tied, either via the source or the destination path. These rules restrict |
| 275 | access when they are encountered on a path, which means that they can restrict |
| 276 | access to multiple file hierarchies at the same time, whether these hierarchies |
| 277 | are the result of bind mounts or not. |
| 278 | |
| 279 | An OverlayFS mount point consists of upper and lower layers. These layers are |
| 280 | combined in a merge directory, and that merged directory becomes available at |
| 281 | the mount point. This merge hierarchy may include files from the upper and |
| 282 | lower layers, but modifications performed on the merge hierarchy only reflect |
| 283 | on the upper layer. From a Landlock policy point of view, all OverlayFS layers |
| 284 | and merge hierarchies are standalone and each contains their own set of files |
| 285 | and directories, which is different from bind mounts. A policy restricting an |
| 286 | OverlayFS layer will not restrict the resulted merged hierarchy, and vice versa. |
| 287 | Landlock users should then only think about file hierarchies they want to allow |
| 288 | access to, regardless of the underlying filesystem. |
| 289 | |
| 290 | Inheritance |
| 291 | ----------- |
| 292 | |
| 293 | Every new thread resulting from a :manpage:`clone(2)` inherits Landlock domain |
| 294 | restrictions from its parent. This is similar to seccomp inheritance (cf. |
| 295 | Documentation/userspace-api/seccomp_filter.rst) or any other LSM dealing with |
| 296 | task's :manpage:`credentials(7)`. For instance, one process's thread may apply |
| 297 | Landlock rules to itself, but they will not be automatically applied to other |
| 298 | sibling threads (unlike POSIX thread credential changes, cf. |
| 299 | :manpage:`nptl(7)`). |
| 300 | |
| 301 | When a thread sandboxes itself, we have the guarantee that the related security |
| 302 | policy will stay enforced on all this thread's descendants. This allows |
| 303 | creating standalone and modular security policies per application, which will |
| 304 | automatically be composed between themselves according to their runtime parent |
| 305 | policies. |
| 306 | |
| 307 | Ptrace restrictions |
| 308 | ------------------- |
| 309 | |
| 310 | A sandboxed process has less privileges than a non-sandboxed process and must |
| 311 | then be subject to additional restrictions when manipulating another process. |
| 312 | To be allowed to use :manpage:`ptrace(2)` and related syscalls on a target |
| 313 | process, a sandboxed process should have a superset of the target process's |
| 314 | access rights, which means the tracee must be in a sub-domain of the tracer. |
| 315 | |
| 316 | IPC scoping |
| 317 | ----------- |
| 318 | |
| 319 | Similar to the implicit `Ptrace restrictions`_, we may want to further restrict |
| 320 | interactions between sandboxes. Therefore, at ruleset creation time, each |
| 321 | Landlock domain can restrict the scope for certain operations, so that these |
| 322 | operations can only reach out to processes within the same Landlock domain or in |
| 323 | a nested Landlock domain (the "scope"). |
| 324 | |
| 325 | The operations which can be scoped are: |
| 326 | |
| 327 | ``LANDLOCK_SCOPE_SIGNAL`` |
| 328 | This limits the sending of signals to target processes which run within the |
| 329 | same or a nested Landlock domain. |
| 330 | |
| 331 | ``LANDLOCK_SCOPE_ABSTRACT_UNIX_SOCKET`` |
| 332 | This limits the set of abstract :manpage:`unix(7)` sockets to which we can |
| 333 | :manpage:`connect(2)` to socket addresses which were created by a process in |
| 334 | the same or a nested Landlock domain. |
| 335 | |
| 336 | A :manpage:`sendto(2)` on a non-connected datagram socket is treated as if |
| 337 | it were doing an implicit :manpage:`connect(2)` and will be blocked if the |
| 338 | remote end does not stem from the same or a nested Landlock domain. |
| 339 | |
| 340 | A :manpage:`sendto(2)` on a socket which was previously connected will not |
| 341 | be restricted. This works for both datagram and stream sockets. |
| 342 | |
| 343 | IPC scoping does not support exceptions via :manpage:`landlock_add_rule(2)`. |
| 344 | If an operation is scoped within a domain, no rules can be added to allow access |
| 345 | to resources or processes outside of the scope. |
| 346 | |
| 347 | Truncating files |
| 348 | ---------------- |
| 349 | |
| 350 | The operations covered by ``LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_WRITE_FILE`` and |
| 351 | ``LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_TRUNCATE`` both change the contents of a file and sometimes |
| 352 | overlap in non-intuitive ways. It is recommended to always specify both of |
| 353 | these together. |
| 354 | |
| 355 | A particularly surprising example is :manpage:`creat(2)`. The name suggests |
| 356 | that this system call requires the rights to create and write files. However, |
| 357 | it also requires the truncate right if an existing file under the same name is |
| 358 | already present. |
| 359 | |
| 360 | It should also be noted that truncating files does not require the |
| 361 | ``LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_WRITE_FILE`` right. Apart from the :manpage:`truncate(2)` |
| 362 | system call, this can also be done through :manpage:`open(2)` with the flags |
| 363 | ``O_RDONLY | O_TRUNC``. |
| 364 | |
| 365 | The truncate right is associated with the opened file (see below). |
| 366 | |
| 367 | Rights associated with file descriptors |
| 368 | --------------------------------------- |
| 369 | |
| 370 | When opening a file, the availability of the ``LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_TRUNCATE`` and |
| 371 | ``LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_IOCTL_DEV`` rights is associated with the newly created |
| 372 | file descriptor and will be used for subsequent truncation and ioctl attempts |
| 373 | using :manpage:`ftruncate(2)` and :manpage:`ioctl(2)`. The behavior is similar |
| 374 | to opening a file for reading or writing, where permissions are checked during |
| 375 | :manpage:`open(2)`, but not during the subsequent :manpage:`read(2)` and |
| 376 | :manpage:`write(2)` calls. |
| 377 | |
| 378 | As a consequence, it is possible that a process has multiple open file |
| 379 | descriptors referring to the same file, but Landlock enforces different things |
| 380 | when operating with these file descriptors. This can happen when a Landlock |
| 381 | ruleset gets enforced and the process keeps file descriptors which were opened |
| 382 | both before and after the enforcement. It is also possible to pass such file |
| 383 | descriptors between processes, keeping their Landlock properties, even when some |
| 384 | of the involved processes do not have an enforced Landlock ruleset. |
| 385 | |
| 386 | Compatibility |
| 387 | ============= |
| 388 | |
| 389 | Backward and forward compatibility |
| 390 | ---------------------------------- |
| 391 | |
| 392 | Landlock is designed to be compatible with past and future versions of the |
| 393 | kernel. This is achieved thanks to the system call attributes and the |
| 394 | associated bitflags, particularly the ruleset's ``handled_access_fs``. Making |
| 395 | handled access rights explicit enables the kernel and user space to have a clear |
| 396 | contract with each other. This is required to make sure sandboxing will not |
| 397 | get stricter with a system update, which could break applications. |
| 398 | |
| 399 | Developers can subscribe to the `Landlock mailing list |
| 400 | <https://subspace.kernel.org/lists.linux.dev.html>`_ to knowingly update and |
| 401 | test their applications with the latest available features. In the interest of |
| 402 | users, and because they may use different kernel versions, it is strongly |
| 403 | encouraged to follow a best-effort security approach by checking the Landlock |
| 404 | ABI version at runtime and only enforcing the supported features. |
| 405 | |
| 406 | .. _landlock_abi_versions: |
| 407 | |
| 408 | Landlock ABI versions |
| 409 | --------------------- |
| 410 | |
| 411 | The Landlock ABI version can be read with the sys_landlock_create_ruleset() |
| 412 | system call: |
| 413 | |
| 414 | .. code-block:: c |
| 415 | |
| 416 | int abi; |
| 417 | |
| 418 | abi = landlock_create_ruleset(NULL, 0, LANDLOCK_CREATE_RULESET_VERSION); |
| 419 | if (abi < 0) { |
| 420 | switch (errno) { |
| 421 | case ENOSYS: |
| 422 | printf("Landlock is not supported by the current kernel.\n"); |
| 423 | break; |
| 424 | case EOPNOTSUPP: |
| 425 | printf("Landlock is currently disabled.\n"); |
| 426 | break; |
| 427 | } |
| 428 | return 0; |
| 429 | } |
| 430 | if (abi >= 2) { |
| 431 | printf("Landlock supports LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_REFER.\n"); |
| 432 | } |
| 433 | |
| 434 | The following kernel interfaces are implicitly supported by the first ABI |
| 435 | version. Features only supported from a specific version are explicitly marked |
| 436 | as such. |
| 437 | |
| 438 | Kernel interface |
| 439 | ================ |
| 440 | |
| 441 | Access rights |
| 442 | ------------- |
| 443 | |
| 444 | .. kernel-doc:: include/uapi/linux/landlock.h |
| 445 | :identifiers: fs_access net_access scope |
| 446 | |
| 447 | Creating a new ruleset |
| 448 | ---------------------- |
| 449 | |
| 450 | .. kernel-doc:: security/landlock/syscalls.c |
| 451 | :identifiers: sys_landlock_create_ruleset |
| 452 | |
| 453 | .. kernel-doc:: include/uapi/linux/landlock.h |
| 454 | :identifiers: landlock_ruleset_attr |
| 455 | |
| 456 | Extending a ruleset |
| 457 | ------------------- |
| 458 | |
| 459 | .. kernel-doc:: security/landlock/syscalls.c |
| 460 | :identifiers: sys_landlock_add_rule |
| 461 | |
| 462 | .. kernel-doc:: include/uapi/linux/landlock.h |
| 463 | :identifiers: landlock_rule_type landlock_path_beneath_attr |
| 464 | landlock_net_port_attr |
| 465 | |
| 466 | Enforcing a ruleset |
| 467 | ------------------- |
| 468 | |
| 469 | .. kernel-doc:: security/landlock/syscalls.c |
| 470 | :identifiers: sys_landlock_restrict_self |
| 471 | |
| 472 | Current limitations |
| 473 | =================== |
| 474 | |
| 475 | Filesystem topology modification |
| 476 | -------------------------------- |
| 477 | |
| 478 | Threads sandboxed with filesystem restrictions cannot modify filesystem |
| 479 | topology, whether via :manpage:`mount(2)` or :manpage:`pivot_root(2)`. |
| 480 | However, :manpage:`chroot(2)` calls are not denied. |
| 481 | |
| 482 | Special filesystems |
| 483 | ------------------- |
| 484 | |
| 485 | Access to regular files and directories can be restricted by Landlock, |
| 486 | according to the handled accesses of a ruleset. However, files that do not |
| 487 | come from a user-visible filesystem (e.g. pipe, socket), but can still be |
| 488 | accessed through ``/proc/<pid>/fd/*``, cannot currently be explicitly |
| 489 | restricted. Likewise, some special kernel filesystems such as nsfs, which can |
| 490 | be accessed through ``/proc/<pid>/ns/*``, cannot currently be explicitly |
| 491 | restricted. However, thanks to the `ptrace restrictions`_, access to such |
| 492 | sensitive ``/proc`` files are automatically restricted according to domain |
| 493 | hierarchies. Future Landlock evolutions could still enable to explicitly |
| 494 | restrict such paths with dedicated ruleset flags. |
| 495 | |
| 496 | Ruleset layers |
| 497 | -------------- |
| 498 | |
| 499 | There is a limit of 16 layers of stacked rulesets. This can be an issue for a |
| 500 | task willing to enforce a new ruleset in complement to its 16 inherited |
| 501 | rulesets. Once this limit is reached, sys_landlock_restrict_self() returns |
| 502 | E2BIG. It is then strongly suggested to carefully build rulesets once in the |
| 503 | life of a thread, especially for applications able to launch other applications |
| 504 | that may also want to sandbox themselves (e.g. shells, container managers, |
| 505 | etc.). |
| 506 | |
| 507 | Memory usage |
| 508 | ------------ |
| 509 | |
| 510 | Kernel memory allocated to create rulesets is accounted and can be restricted |
| 511 | by the Documentation/admin-guide/cgroup-v1/memory.rst. |
| 512 | |
| 513 | IOCTL support |
| 514 | ------------- |
| 515 | |
| 516 | The ``LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_IOCTL_DEV`` right restricts the use of |
| 517 | :manpage:`ioctl(2)`, but it only applies to *newly opened* device files. This |
| 518 | means specifically that pre-existing file descriptors like stdin, stdout and |
| 519 | stderr are unaffected. |
| 520 | |
| 521 | Users should be aware that TTY devices have traditionally permitted to control |
| 522 | other processes on the same TTY through the ``TIOCSTI`` and ``TIOCLINUX`` IOCTL |
| 523 | commands. Both of these require ``CAP_SYS_ADMIN`` on modern Linux systems, but |
| 524 | the behavior is configurable for ``TIOCSTI``. |
| 525 | |
| 526 | On older systems, it is therefore recommended to close inherited TTY file |
| 527 | descriptors, or to reopen them from ``/proc/self/fd/*`` without the |
| 528 | ``LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_IOCTL_DEV`` right, if possible. |
| 529 | |
| 530 | Landlock's IOCTL support is coarse-grained at the moment, but may become more |
| 531 | fine-grained in the future. Until then, users are advised to establish the |
| 532 | guarantees that they need through the file hierarchy, by only allowing the |
| 533 | ``LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_IOCTL_DEV`` right on files where it is really required. |
| 534 | |
| 535 | Previous limitations |
| 536 | ==================== |
| 537 | |
| 538 | File renaming and linking (ABI < 2) |
| 539 | ----------------------------------- |
| 540 | |
| 541 | Because Landlock targets unprivileged access controls, it needs to properly |
| 542 | handle composition of rules. Such property also implies rules nesting. |
| 543 | Properly handling multiple layers of rulesets, each one of them able to |
| 544 | restrict access to files, also implies inheritance of the ruleset restrictions |
| 545 | from a parent to its hierarchy. Because files are identified and restricted by |
| 546 | their hierarchy, moving or linking a file from one directory to another implies |
| 547 | propagation of the hierarchy constraints, or restriction of these actions |
| 548 | according to the potentially lost constraints. To protect against privilege |
| 549 | escalations through renaming or linking, and for the sake of simplicity, |
| 550 | Landlock previously limited linking and renaming to the same directory. |
| 551 | Starting with the Landlock ABI version 2, it is now possible to securely |
| 552 | control renaming and linking thanks to the new ``LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_REFER`` |
| 553 | access right. |
| 554 | |
| 555 | File truncation (ABI < 3) |
| 556 | ------------------------- |
| 557 | |
| 558 | File truncation could not be denied before the third Landlock ABI, so it is |
| 559 | always allowed when using a kernel that only supports the first or second ABI. |
| 560 | |
| 561 | Starting with the Landlock ABI version 3, it is now possible to securely control |
| 562 | truncation thanks to the new ``LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_TRUNCATE`` access right. |
| 563 | |
| 564 | TCP bind and connect (ABI < 4) |
| 565 | ------------------------------ |
| 566 | |
| 567 | Starting with the Landlock ABI version 4, it is now possible to restrict TCP |
| 568 | bind and connect actions to only a set of allowed ports thanks to the new |
| 569 | ``LANDLOCK_ACCESS_NET_BIND_TCP`` and ``LANDLOCK_ACCESS_NET_CONNECT_TCP`` |
| 570 | access rights. |
| 571 | |
| 572 | Device IOCTL (ABI < 5) |
| 573 | ---------------------- |
| 574 | |
| 575 | IOCTL operations could not be denied before the fifth Landlock ABI, so |
| 576 | :manpage:`ioctl(2)` is always allowed when using a kernel that only supports an |
| 577 | earlier ABI. |
| 578 | |
| 579 | Starting with the Landlock ABI version 5, it is possible to restrict the use of |
| 580 | :manpage:`ioctl(2)` on character and block devices using the new |
| 581 | ``LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_IOCTL_DEV`` right. |
| 582 | |
| 583 | Abstract UNIX socket (ABI < 6) |
| 584 | ------------------------------ |
| 585 | |
| 586 | Starting with the Landlock ABI version 6, it is possible to restrict |
| 587 | connections to an abstract :manpage:`unix(7)` socket by setting |
| 588 | ``LANDLOCK_SCOPE_ABSTRACT_UNIX_SOCKET`` to the ``scoped`` ruleset attribute. |
| 589 | |
| 590 | Signal (ABI < 6) |
| 591 | ---------------- |
| 592 | |
| 593 | Starting with the Landlock ABI version 6, it is possible to restrict |
| 594 | :manpage:`signal(7)` sending by setting ``LANDLOCK_SCOPE_SIGNAL`` to the |
| 595 | ``scoped`` ruleset attribute. |
| 596 | |
| 597 | Logging (ABI < 7) |
| 598 | ----------------- |
| 599 | |
| 600 | Starting with the Landlock ABI version 7, it is possible to control logging of |
| 601 | Landlock audit events with the ``LANDLOCK_RESTRICT_SELF_LOG_SAME_EXEC_OFF``, |
| 602 | ``LANDLOCK_RESTRICT_SELF_LOG_NEW_EXEC_ON``, and |
| 603 | ``LANDLOCK_RESTRICT_SELF_LOG_SUBDOMAINS_OFF`` flags passed to |
| 604 | sys_landlock_restrict_self(). See Documentation/admin-guide/LSM/landlock.rst |
| 605 | for more details on audit. |
| 606 | |
| 607 | .. _kernel_support: |
| 608 | |
| 609 | Kernel support |
| 610 | ============== |
| 611 | |
| 612 | Build time configuration |
| 613 | ------------------------ |
| 614 | |
| 615 | Landlock was first introduced in Linux 5.13 but it must be configured at build |
| 616 | time with ``CONFIG_SECURITY_LANDLOCK=y``. Landlock must also be enabled at boot |
| 617 | time like other security modules. The list of security modules enabled by |
| 618 | default is set with ``CONFIG_LSM``. The kernel configuration should then |
| 619 | contain ``CONFIG_LSM=landlock,[...]`` with ``[...]`` as the list of other |
| 620 | potentially useful security modules for the running system (see the |
| 621 | ``CONFIG_LSM`` help). |
| 622 | |
| 623 | Boot time configuration |
| 624 | ----------------------- |
| 625 | |
| 626 | If the running kernel does not have ``landlock`` in ``CONFIG_LSM``, then we can |
| 627 | enable Landlock by adding ``lsm=landlock,[...]`` to |
| 628 | Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.rst in the boot loader |
| 629 | configuration. |
| 630 | |
| 631 | For example, if the current built-in configuration is: |
| 632 | |
| 633 | .. code-block:: console |
| 634 | |
| 635 | $ zgrep -h "^CONFIG_LSM=" "/boot/config-$(uname -r)" /proc/config.gz 2>/dev/null |
| 636 | CONFIG_LSM="lockdown,yama,integrity,apparmor" |
| 637 | |
| 638 | ...and if the cmdline doesn't contain ``landlock`` either: |
| 639 | |
| 640 | .. code-block:: console |
| 641 | |
| 642 | $ sed -n 's/.*\(\<lsm=\S\+\).*/\1/p' /proc/cmdline |
| 643 | lsm=lockdown,yama,integrity,apparmor |
| 644 | |
| 645 | ...we should configure the boot loader to set a cmdline extending the ``lsm`` |
| 646 | list with the ``landlock,`` prefix:: |
| 647 | |
| 648 | lsm=landlock,lockdown,yama,integrity,apparmor |
| 649 | |
| 650 | After a reboot, we can check that Landlock is up and running by looking at |
| 651 | kernel logs: |
| 652 | |
| 653 | .. code-block:: console |
| 654 | |
| 655 | # dmesg | grep landlock || journalctl -kb -g landlock |
| 656 | [ 0.000000] Command line: [...] lsm=landlock,lockdown,yama,integrity,apparmor |
| 657 | [ 0.000000] Kernel command line: [...] lsm=landlock,lockdown,yama,integrity,apparmor |
| 658 | [ 0.000000] LSM: initializing lsm=lockdown,capability,landlock,yama,integrity,apparmor |
| 659 | [ 0.000000] landlock: Up and running. |
| 660 | |
| 661 | The kernel may be configured at build time to always load the ``lockdown`` and |
| 662 | ``capability`` LSMs. In that case, these LSMs will appear at the beginning of |
| 663 | the ``LSM: initializing`` log line as well, even if they are not configured in |
| 664 | the boot loader. |
| 665 | |
| 666 | Network support |
| 667 | --------------- |
| 668 | |
| 669 | To be able to explicitly allow TCP operations (e.g., adding a network rule with |
| 670 | ``LANDLOCK_ACCESS_NET_BIND_TCP``), the kernel must support TCP |
| 671 | (``CONFIG_INET=y``). Otherwise, sys_landlock_add_rule() returns an |
| 672 | ``EAFNOSUPPORT`` error, which can safely be ignored because this kind of TCP |
| 673 | operation is already not possible. |
| 674 | |
| 675 | Questions and answers |
| 676 | ===================== |
| 677 | |
| 678 | What about user space sandbox managers? |
| 679 | --------------------------------------- |
| 680 | |
| 681 | Using user space processes to enforce restrictions on kernel resources can lead |
| 682 | to race conditions or inconsistent evaluations (i.e. `Incorrect mirroring of |
| 683 | the OS code and state |
| 684 | <https://www.ndss-symposium.org/ndss2003/traps-and-pitfalls-practical-problems-system-call-interposition-based-security-tools/>`_). |
| 685 | |
| 686 | What about namespaces and containers? |
| 687 | ------------------------------------- |
| 688 | |
| 689 | Namespaces can help create sandboxes but they are not designed for |
| 690 | access-control and then miss useful features for such use case (e.g. no |
| 691 | fine-grained restrictions). Moreover, their complexity can lead to security |
| 692 | issues, especially when untrusted processes can manipulate them (cf. |
| 693 | `Controlling access to user namespaces <https://lwn.net/Articles/673597/>`_). |
| 694 | |
| 695 | How to disable Landlock audit records? |
| 696 | -------------------------------------- |
| 697 | |
| 698 | You might want to put in place filters as explained here: |
| 699 | Documentation/admin-guide/LSM/landlock.rst |
| 700 | |
| 701 | Additional documentation |
| 702 | ======================== |
| 703 | |
| 704 | * Documentation/admin-guide/LSM/landlock.rst |
| 705 | * Documentation/security/landlock.rst |
| 706 | * https://landlock.io |
| 707 | |
| 708 | .. Links |
| 709 | .. _samples/landlock/sandboxer.c: |
| 710 | https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/tree/samples/landlock/sandboxer.c |