Patch "unshare: Unsharing a thread does not require unsharing a vm" has been added to the 4.2-stable tree

This is a note to let you know that I've just added the patch titled

unshare: Unsharing a thread does not require unsharing a vm

to the 4.2-stable tree which can be found at:
http://www.kernel.org/git/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/stable-queue.git;a=summary

The filename of the patch is:
unshare-unsharing-a-thread-does-not-require-unsharing-a-vm.patch
and it can be found in the queue-4.2 subdirectory.

If you, or anyone else, feels it should not be added to the stable tree, please let <[email protected]> know about it.

From: "Eric W. Biederman" <[email protected]>
Date: Mon, 10 Aug 2015 17:35:07 -0500
Subject: unshare: Unsharing a thread does not require unsharing a vm

From: "Eric W. Biederman" <[email protected]>

commit 12c641ab8270f787dfcce08b5f20ce8b65008096 upstream.

In the logic in the initial commit of unshare made creating a new thread group for a process, contingent upon creating a new memory address space for that process. That is wrong. Two separate processes in different thread groups can share a memory address space and clone allows creation of such proceses.

This is significant because it was observed that mm_users > 1 does not mean that a process is multi-threaded, as reading /proc/PID/maps temporarily increments mm_users, which allows other processes to (accidentally) interfere with unshare() calls.

Correct the check in check_unshare_flags() to test for !thread_group_empty() for CLONE_THREAD, CLONE_SIGHAND, and CLONE_VM. For sighand->count > 1 for CLONE_SIGHAND and CLONE_VM.
For !current_is_single_threaded instead of mm_users > 1 for CLONE_VM.

By using the correct checks in unshare this removes the possibility of an accidental denial of service attack.

Additionally using the correct checks in unshare ensures that only an explicit unshare(CLONE_VM) can possibly trigger the slow path of current_is_single_threaded(). As an explict unshare(CLONE_VM) is pointless it is not expected there are many applications that make that call.

---
 kernel/fork.c |   28 ++++++++++++++++++----------
 1 file changed, 18 insertions(+), 10 deletions(-)

@@ -1871,13 +1871,21 @@ static int check_unshare_flags(unsigned
 				CLONE_NEWUSER|CLONE_NEWPID))
 		return -EINVAL;
 	/*
-	 * Not implemented, but pretend it works if there is nothing to
-	 * unshare. Note that unsharing CLONE_THREAD or CLONE_SIGHAND
-	 * needs to unshare vm.
+	 * Not implemented, but pretend it works if there is nothing
+	 * to unshare.  Note that unsharing the address space or the
+	 * signal handlers also need to unshare the signal queues (aka
+	 * CLONE_THREAD).
 	 */
 	if (unshare_flags & (CLONE_THREAD | CLONE_SIGHAND | CLONE_VM)) {
-		/* FIXME: get_task_mm() increments ->mm_users */
-		if (atomic_read(&current->mm->mm_users) > 1)
+		if (!thread_group_empty(current))
+			return -EINVAL;
+	}
+	if (unshare_flags & (CLONE_SIGHAND | CLONE_VM)) {
+		if (atomic_read(&current->sighand->count) > 1)
+			return -EINVAL;
+	}
+	if (unshare_flags & CLONE_VM) {
+		if (!current_is_single_threaded())
 			return -EINVAL;
 	}
 

@@ -1946,16 +1954,16 @@ SYSCALL_DEFINE1(unshare, unsigned long,
 	if (unshare_flags & CLONE_NEWUSER)
 		unshare_flags |= CLONE_THREAD | CLONE_FS;
 	/*
-	 * If unsharing a thread from a thread group, must also unshare vm.
-	 */
-	if (unshare_flags & CLONE_THREAD)
-		unshare_flags |= CLONE_VM;
-	/*
 	 * If unsharing vm, must also unshare signal handlers.
 	 */
 	if (unshare_flags & CLONE_VM)
 		unshare_flags |= CLONE_SIGHAND;
 	/*
+	 * If unsharing a signal handlers, must also unshare the signal queues.
+	 */
+	if (unshare_flags & CLONE_SIGHAND)
+		unshare_flags |= CLONE_THREAD;
+	/*
 	 * If unsharing namespace, must also unshare filesystem information.
 	 */
 	if (unshare_flags & CLONE_NEWNS)

Patches currently in stable-queue which might be from [email protected] are

queue-4.2/unshare-unsharing-a-thread-does-not-require-unsharing-a-vm.patch