Defence-in-depth pass over every helper method that touches the host
as root. Each fix narrows what a compromised owner-uid daemon could
ask the helper to do; many close concrete file-ownership and DoS
primitives that the previous validators didn't reach.
Path / identifier validation:
* priv.fsck_snapshot now requires /dev/mapper/fc-rootfs-* (was
"is the string non-empty"). e2fsck -fy on /dev/sda1 was the
motivating exploit.
* priv.kill_process and priv.signal_process now read
/proc/<pid>/cmdline and require a "firecracker" substring before
sending the signal. Killing arbitrary host PIDs (sshd, init, …)
is no longer a one-RPC primitive.
* priv.read_ext4_file and priv.write_ext4_files now require the
image path to live under StateDir or be /dev/mapper/fc-rootfs-*.
* priv.cleanup_dm_snapshot validates every non-empty Handles field:
DM name fc-rootfs-*, DM device /dev/mapper/fc-rootfs-*, loops
/dev/loopN.
* priv.remove_dm_snapshot accepts only fc-rootfs-* names or
/dev/mapper/fc-rootfs-* paths.
* priv.ensure_nat now requires a parsable IPv4 address and a
banger-prefixed tap.
* priv.sync_resolver_routing and priv.clear_resolver_routing now
require a Linux iface-name-shaped bridge name (1–15 chars, no
whitespace/'/'/':') and, for sync, a parsable resolver address.
Symlink defence:
* priv.ensure_socket_access now validates the socket path is under
RuntimeDir and not a symlink. The fcproc layer's chown/chmod
moves to unix.Open(O_PATH|O_NOFOLLOW) + Fchownat(AT_EMPTY_PATH)
+ Fchmodat via /proc/self/fd, so even a swap of the leaf into a
symlink between validation and the syscall is refused. The
local-priv (non-root) fallback uses `chown -h`.
* priv.cleanup_jailer_chroot rejects symlinks at both the leaf
(os.Lstat) and intermediate path components (filepath.EvalSymlinks
+ clean-equality). The umount sweep was rewritten from shell
`umount --recursive --lazy` to direct unix.Unmount(MNT_DETACH |
UMOUNT_NOFOLLOW) per child mount, deepest-first; the findmnt
guard remains as the rm-rf safety net. Local-priv mode falls
back to `sudo umount --lazy`.
Binary validation:
* validateRootExecutable now opens with O_PATH|O_NOFOLLOW and
Fstats through the resulting fd. Rejects path-level symlinks and
narrows the TOCTOU window between validation and the SDK's exec
to fork+exec time on a healthy host.
Daemon socket:
* The owner daemon now reads SO_PEERCRED on every accepted
connection and refuses any UID that isn't 0 or the registered
owner. Filesystem perms (0600 + ownerUID) already enforced this;
the check is belt-and-braces in case the socket FD is ever
leaked to a non-owner process.
Docs:
* docs/privileges.md walked end-to-end. Each helper RPC's
Validation gate row reflects what the code actually enforces.
New section "Running outside the system install" calls out the
looser dev-mode trust model (NOPASSWD sudoers, helper hardening
bypassed) so users don't deploy that path on shared hosts.
Trust list updated to include every new validator.
Tests added: validators (DM-loop, DM-remove-target, DM-handles,
ext4-image-path, iface-name, IPv4, resolver-addr, not-symlink,
firecracker-PID, root-executable variants), the daemon's authorize
path (non-unix conn rejection + unix conn happy path), the umount2
ordering contract (deepest-first + --lazy on the sudo branch), and
positive/negative cases for the chown-no-follow fallback.
Verified end-to-end via `make smoke JOBS=4` on a KVM host.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Thales Maciel
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