change_hat - change to or from a "hat" or subprofile within an AppArmor profile


NAME

change_hat - change to or from a ``hat'' or subprofile within an AppArmor profile


SYNOPSIS

#include <sys/apparmor.h>

int change_hat (char *subdomain, unsigned int magic_token);


DESCRIPTION

A profile applies to an executable program, but sometimes a portion of the program requires different access permissions than other portions, which is when the program can ``change hats'' to a different role, also known as a subprofile. To change into a new hat, the program calls the change_hat() function. It passes in a pointer to the subprofile that it wants to change into, and a 32bit magic_token. The magic_token is used to return out of the subprofile at a later time.

If a program wants to return to the original profile from the subprofile, it will call change_hat() with a pointer to NULL as the subprofile, and the original magic_token value. If the magic_token does not match the original magic_token passed into the kernel when the program entered the subprofile, the change back to the original profile will not happen, and the current task will be killed. If the magic_token matches the original token, then the process will change back to the original profile.

If the program wants to change to a subprofile that it can never change back out of, the application should call change_hat() with a magic_token of 0.

As both read(2) and write(2) are mediated, a file must be listed in a subprofile definition if the file is to be accessed while the process is in a ``hat''.


RETURN VALUE

On success zero is returned. On error, -1 is returned, and errno(3) is set appropriately.


ERRORS

ENOMEM
Insufficient kernel memory was available.

EACCES
The magic_token passed in was 0, which is not a valid value for the magic_token, or the specified subprofile does not exist in this profile.

EFAULT
An internal error occurred.


EXAMPLE

The following code examples shows simple, if contrived, uses of change_hat(); a typical use of change_hat() will separate privileged portions of a process from unprivileged portions of a process, such as keeping unauthenticated network traffic handling separate from authenticated network traffic handling in OpenSSH or executing user-supplied CGI scripts in apache.

The use of random(3) is simply illustrative. Use of /dev/urandom is recommended.

First, a simple high-level overview of change_hat() use:

 void foo (void) {
        int magic_token;
  
        /* get a random magic token value
        from our huge entropy pool */
        magic_token = random_function();
 
        /* change into the subprofile while
         * we do stuff we don't trust */
        change_hat ("stuff_we_dont_trust", magic_token);
        /* Go do stuff we don't trust -- this is all
         * done in *this* process space, no separate
         * fork()/exec()'s are done. */
        interpret_perl_stuff(stuff_from_user);
        /* now change back to our original subdomain */
        change_hat (NULL, magic_token);
 }

Second, an example to show that files not listed in a subprofile (``hat'') aren't accessible after a change_hat() call:

 #include <stdlib.h>
 #include <string.h>
 #include <sys/immunix.h>
 #include <sys/types.h>
 #include <sys/stat.h>
 #include <fcntl.h>
 #include <stdio.h>
 #include <unistd.h>
 
 
 int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
        int fd;
        int tok;
        char buf[10];
 
        /* random() is a poor choice */
        tok = random();
 
        /* open /etc/passwd outside of any hat */
        if ((fd=open("/etc/passwd", O_RDONLY)) < 0)
                perror("Failure opening /etc/passwd");
 
        /* confirm for ourselves that we can really read /etc/passwd */
        memset(&buf, 0, 10);
        if (read(fd, &buf, 10) == -1) {
                perror("Failure reading /etc/passwd pre-hat");
                _exit(1);
        }
        buf[9] = '\0';
        printf("/etc/passwd: %s\n", buf);
 
        /* change hat to the "hat" subprofile, which should not have
         * read access to /etc/passwd -- even though we have a valid
         * file descriptor at the time of the change_hat() call. */
        if (change_hat("hat", tok)) {
                perror("Failure changing hat -- aborting");
                _exit(1);
        }
 
        /* confirm that we cannot read /etc/passwd */
        lseek(fd,0,SEEK_SET);
        memset(&buf, 0, 10);
        if (read(fd, &buf, 10) == -1)
                perror("Failure reading /etc/passwd post-hat");
        buf[9] = '\0';
        printf("/etc/passwd: %s\n", buf);
 
        return 0;
 }

This code example requires the following profile to be loaded with subdomain_parser(8):

 /tmp/ch {
 #default entries; most required by __canary_death_handler()
 /dev/log                       w ,
 /etc/ld.so.cache               r ,
 /etc/locale/**                 r ,
 /etc/localtime                 r ,
 /usr/share/locale/**           r ,
 /usr/share/zoneinfo/**         r ,
 /usr/lib/locale/**             r ,
 /usr/lib/gconv/*.so            r ,
 /usr/lib/gconv/gconv-modules*  r ,
 #entries specific to this application
 /lib/ld-*.so* rx ,
 /lib/libc*.so* r ,
 /etc/passwd    r ,
 /dev/pts/*     rw,
 /tmp/ch        r ,
 }
 
 /tmp/ch^hat {
 /dev/pts/*     rw,
 }

The output when run:

 $ /tmp/ch
 /etc/passwd: root:x:0:
 Failure reading /etc/passwd post-hat: Permission denied
 /etc/passwd:
 $


BUGS

None known. If you find any, please report them to bugzilla at http://bugs.wirex.com.


SEE ALSO

 change_hat - change to or from a "hat" or subprofile within an AppArmor profile