Re: [PATCH] host/roots: Sandbox xdg-desktop-portal-spectrum-host

Alyssa Ross <[email protected]> Sun, 14 Dec 2025 02:39:00 +0100
Newsgroups dev.linux.lists.landlock,org.kernel.vger.linux-security-module
Message-ID <[email protected]>
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Demi Marie Obenour <[email protected]> writes:

> On 12/13/25 16:42, Alyssa Ross wrote:
>> Demi Marie Obenour <[email protected]> writes:
>>=20
>>> On 12/13/25 14:12, Alyssa Ross wrote:
>>>> Demi Marie Obenour <[email protected]> writes:
>>>>
>>>>> It is quite possible that these Landlock rules are unnecessarily
>>>>> permissive, but all of the paths to which read and execute access is
>>>>> granted are part of the root filesystem and therefore assumed to be
>>>>> public knowledge.  Removing access from any of them would only increa=
se
>>>>> the risk of accidental breakage in the future, and would not provide =
any
>>>>> security improvements.  seccomp *could* provide some improvements, but
>>>>> the effort needed is too high for now.
>>>>>
>>>>> Signed-off-by: Demi Marie Obenour <[email protected]>
>>>>> ---
>>>>>  .../template/data/service/xdg-desktop-portal-spectrum-host/run    | =
8 ++++++++
>>>>>  1 file changed, 8 insertions(+)
>>>>
>>>> Are you sure this is working as intended?  There's no rule allowing
>>>> access to Cloud Hypervisor's VSOCK socket, and yet it still seems to be
>>>> able to access that.  Don't you need to set a rule that *restricts*
>>>> filesystem access and then add holes?  Did you ever see this deny
>>>> anything?
>>>
>>> 'man 1 setpriv' states that '--landlock-access fs' blocks all
>>> filesystem access unless a subsequent --landlock-rule permits it.
>>> I tried running with no --landlock-rule flags and the execve of
>>> xdg-desktop-portal-spectrum-host failed as expected.
>>>
>>> The socket is passed over stdin, and I'm pretty sure Landlock
>>> doesn't restrict using an already-open file descriptor.
>>> xdg-desktop-portal-spectrum-host does need to find the path to the
>>> socket, but I don't think it ever accesses that path.
>>=20
>> I've been looking into this a bit myself, and from what I can tell
>> Landlock just doesn't restrict connecting to sockets at all, even if
>> they're inside directories that would otherwise be inaccessible.  It's
>> able to connect to both Cloud Hypervisor's VSOCK socket and the D-Bus
>> socket even with a maximally restrictive landlock rule.  So you were
>> right after all, sorry!
>
> That's not good at all!  It's a trivial sandbox escape in so many cases.
> For instance, with access to D-Bus I can just call `systemd-run`.
>
> I'm CCing the Landlock and LSM mailing lists because if you are
> correct, then this is a bad security hole.

I don't find it that surprising given the way landlock works.  "connect"
(to a non-abstract AF_UNIX socket) is not an operation there's a
landlock action for, and it's not like the other actions care about
access to parent directories and the like =E2=80=94 I was able to execute a
program via a symlink after only giving access to the symlink's target,
without any access to the directory containing the symlink or the
symlink itself, for example.  Landlock, as I understand it, is intended
to block a specified set of operations (on particular file hierarchies),
rather than to completely prevent access to those hierarchies like
permissions or mount namespaces could, so the lack of a way to block
connecting to a socket is more of a missing feature than a security
hole.

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