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It's very common for various tracing and profiling toolis to need to
access /proc/PID/maps contents for stack symbolization needs to learn
which shared libraries are mapped in memory, at which file offset, etc.
Currently, access to /proc/PID/maps requires CAP_SYS_PTRACE (unless we are
looking at data for our own process, which is a trivial case not too
relevant for profilers use cases).
Unfortunately, CAP_SYS_PTRACE implies way more than just ability to
discover memory layout of another process: it allows to fully control
arbitrary other processes. This is problematic from security POV for
applications that only need read-only /proc/PID/maps (and other similar
read-only data) access, and in large production settings CAP_SYS_PTRACE is
frowned upon even for the system-wide profilers.
On the other hand, it's already possible to access similar kind of
information (and more) with just CAP_PERFMON capability. E.g., setting up
PERF_RECORD_MMAP collection through perf_event_open() would give one
similar information to what /proc/PID/maps provides.
CAP_PERFMON, together with CAP_BPF, is already a very common combination
for system-wide profiling and observability application. As such, it's
reasonable and convenient to be able to access /proc/PID/maps with
CAP_PERFMON capabilities instead of CAP_SYS_PTRACE.
For procfs, these permissions are checked through common mm_access()
helper, and so we augment that with cap_perfmon() check *only* if
requested mode is PTRACE_MODE_READ. I.e., PTRACE_MODE_ATTACH wouldn't be
permitted by CAP_PERFMON. So /proc/PID/mem, which uses
PTRACE_MODE_ATTACH, won't be permitted by CAP_PERFMON, but /proc/PID/maps,
/proc/PID/environ, and a bunch of other read-only contents will be
allowable under CAP_PERFMON.
Besides procfs itself, mm_access() is used by process_madvise() and
process_vm_{readv,writev}() syscalls. The former one uses
PTRACE_MODE_READ to avoid leaking ASLR metadata, and as such CAP_PERFMON
seems like a meaningful allowable capability as well.
process_vm_{readv,writev} currently assume PTRACE_MODE_ATTACH level of
permissions (though for readv PTRACE_MODE_READ seems more reasonable, but
that's outside the scope of this change), and as such won't be affected by
this patch.
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20250127222114.1132392-1-andrii@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Andrii Nakryiko <andrii@kernel.org>
Reviewed-by: Shakeel Butt <shakeel.butt@linux.dev>
Acked-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
Cc: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
Cc: Christian Brauner <brauner@kernel.org>
Cc: Jann Horn <jannh@google.com>
Cc: Kees Cook <kees@kernel.org>
Cc: Liam Howlett <liam.howlett@oracle.com>
Cc: "Mike Rapoport (IBM)" <rppt@kernel.org>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra (Intel) <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Suren Baghdasaryan <surenb@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Linux kernel
============
There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.
In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``. The formatted documentation can also be read online at:
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/
There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the reStructuredText markup notation.
Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.