Definitions ~~~~~~~~~~~ Userspace filesystem: A filesystem in which data and metadata are provided by an ordinary userspace process. The filesystem can be accessed normally through the kernel interface. Filesystem daemon: The process(es) providing the data and metadata of the filesystem. Non-privileged mount (or user mount): A userspace filesystem mounted by a non-privileged (non-root) user. The filesystem daemon is running with the privileges of the mounting user. NOTE: this is not the same as mounts allowed with the "user" option in /etc/fstab, which is not discussed here. Mount owner: The user who does the mounting. User: The user who is performing filesystem operations. What is FUSE? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ FUSE is a userspace filesystem framework. It consists of a kernel module (fuse.ko), a userspace library (libfuse.*) and a mount utility (fusermount). One of the most important features of FUSE is allowing secure, non-privileged mounts. This opens up new possibilities for the use of filesystems. A good example is sshfs: a secure network filesystem using the sftp protocol. The userspace library and utilities are available from the FUSE homepage: http://fuse.sourceforge.net/ Mount options ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 'fd=N' The file descriptor to use for communication between the userspace filesystem and the kernel. The file descriptor must have been obtained by opening the FUSE device ('/dev/fuse'). 'rootmode=M' The file mode of the filesystem's root in octal representation. 'user_id=N' The numeric user id of the mount owner. 'group_id=N' The numeric group id of the mount owner. 'default_permissions' By default FUSE doesn't check file access permissions, the filesystem is free to implement it's access policy or leave it to the underlying file access mechanism (e.g. in case of network filesystems). This option enables permission checking, restricting access based on file mode. This is option is usually useful together with the 'allow_other' mount option. 'allow_other' This option overrides the security measure restricting file access to the user mounting the filesystem. This option is by default only allowed to root, but this restriction can be removed with a (userspace) configuration option. 'max_read=N' With this option the maximum size of read operations can be set. The default is infinite. Note that the size of read requests is limited anyway to 32 pages (which is 128kbyte on i386). How do non-privileged mounts work? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Since the mount() system call is a privileged operation, a helper program (fusermount) is needed, which is installed setuid root. The implication of providing non-privileged mounts is that the mount owner must not be able to use this capability to compromise the system. Obvious requirements arising from this are: A) mount owner should not be able to get elevated privileges with the help of the mounted filesystem B) mount owner should not get illegitimate access to information from other users' and the super user's processes C) mount owner should not be able to induce undesired behavior in other users' or the super user's processes How are requirements fulfilled? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A) The mount owner could gain elevated privileges by either: 1) creating a filesystem containing a device file, then opening this device 2) creating a filesystem containing a suid or sgid application, then executing this application The solution is not to allow opening device files and ignore setuid and setgid bits when executing programs. To ensure this fusermount always adds "nosuid" and "nodev" to the mount options for non-privileged mounts. B) If another user is accessing files or directories in the filesystem, the filesystem daemon serving requests can record the exact sequence and timing of operations performed. This information is otherwise inaccessible to the mount owner, so this counts as an information leak. The solution to this problem will be presented in point 2) of C). C) There are several ways in which the mount owner can induce undesired behavior in other users' processes, such as: 1) mounting a filesystem over a file or directory which the mount owner could otherwise not be able to modify (or could only make limited modifications). This is solved in fusermount, by checking the access permissions on the mountpoint and only allowing the mount if the mount owner can do unlimited modification (has write access to the mountpoint, and mountpoint is not a "sticky" directory) 2) Even if 1) is solved the mount owner can change the behavior of other users' processes. i) It can slow down or indefinitely delay the execution of a filesystem operation creating a DoS against the user or the whole system. For example a suid application locking a system file, and then accessing a file on the mount owner's filesystem could be stopped, and thus causing the system file to be locked forever. ii) It can present files or directories of unlimited length, or directory structures of unlimited depth, possibly causing a system process to eat up diskspace, memory or other resources, again causing DoS. The solution to this as well as B) is not to allow processes to access the filesystem, which could otherwise not be monitored or manipulated by the mount owner. Since if the mount owner can ptrace a process, it can do all of the above without using a FUSE mount, the same criteria as used in ptrace can be used to check if a process is allowed to access the filesystem or not. Note that the ptrace check is not strictly necessary to prevent B/2/i, it is enough to check if mount owner has enough privilege to send signal to the process accessing the filesystem, since SIGSTOP can be used to get a similar effect. I think these limitations are unacceptable? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If a sysadmin trusts the users enough, or can ensure through other measures, that system processes will never enter non-privileged mounts, it can relax the last limitation with a "user_allow_other" config option. If this config option is set, the mounting user can add the "allow_other" mount option which disables the check for other users' processes. Kernel - userspace interface ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The following diagram shows how a filesystem operation (in this example unlink) is performed in FUSE. NOTE: everything in this description is greatly simplified | "rm /mnt/fuse/file" | FUSE filesystem daemon | | | | >sys_read() | | >fuse_dev_read() | | >request_wait() | | [sleep on fc->waitq] | | | >sys_unlink() | | >fuse_unlink() | | [get request from | | fc->unused_list] | | >request_send() | | [queue req on fc->pending] | | [wake up fc->waitq] | [woken up] | >request_wait_answer() | | [sleep on req->waitq] | | | pending] | | [copy req to read buffer] | | [add req to fc->processing] | | sys_write() | | >fuse_dev_write() | | [look up req in fc->processing] | | [remove from fc->processing] | | [copy write buffer to req] | [woken up] | [wake up req->waitq] | | unused_list] | | sys_unlink("/mnt/fuse/file") | | [acquire inode semaphore | | for "file"] | | >fuse_unlink() | | [sleep on req->waitq] | | | sys_unlink("/mnt/fuse/file") | | [acquire inode semaphore | | for "file"] | | *DEADLOCK* The solution for this is to allow requests to be interrupted while they are in userspace: | [interrupted by signal] | | fuse_unlink() | | [queue req on fc->pending] | | [wake up fc->waitq] | | [sleep on req->waitq] If the filesystem daemon was single threaded, this will stop here, since there's no other thread to dequeue and execute the request. In this case the solution is to kill the FUSE daemon as well. If there are multiple serving threads, you just have to kill them as long as any remain. Moral: a filesystem which deadlocks, can soon find itself dead. Scenario 2 - Tricky deadlock ---------------------------- This one needs a carefully crafted filesystem. It's a variation on the above, only the call back to the filesystem is not explicit, but is caused by a pagefault. | Kamikaze filesystem thread 1 | Kamikaze filesystem thread 2 | | | [fd = open("/mnt/fuse/file")] | [request served normally] | [mmap fd to 'addr'] | | [close fd] | [FLUSH triggers 'magic' flag] | [read a byte from addr] | | >do_page_fault() | | [find or create page] | | [lock page] | | >fuse_readpage() | | [queue READ request] | | [sleep on req->waitq] | | | [read request to buffer] | | [create reply header before addr] | | >sys_write(addr - headerlength) | | >fuse_dev_write() | | [look up req in fc->processing] | | [remove from fc->processing] | | [copy write buffer to req] | | >do_page_fault() | | [find or create page] | | [lock page] | | * DEADLOCK * Solution is again to let the the request be interrupted (not elaborated further). An additional problem is that while the write buffer is being copied to the request, the request must not be interrupted. This is because the destination address of the copy may not be valid after the request is interrupted. This is solved with doing the copy atomically, and allowing interruption while the page(s) belonging to the write buffer are faulted with get_user_pages(). The 'req->locked' flag indicates when the copy is taking place, and interruption is delayed until this flag is unset.