Re: Non-root chroot
- In reply to: Wismos_a_proton.me: "Re: Non-root chroot"
- Go to: [ bottom of page ] [ top of archives ] [ this month ]
Date: Fri, 01 Aug 2025 13:30:01 UTC
Initially - yes, but root can escape from chroot easily, e.g. by mounting filesystems. пт, 1 авг. 2025 г. в 14:46, <Wismos@proton.me>: > wouldn't the root access will be contained inside the chroot only? > > > -------- Original Message -------- > On 01/08/25 6:09 pm, Dmitry Mikushin wrote: > > The fundamental security concern with allowing unprivileged chroot() is *privilege > escalation through file system manipulation*: > > 1. A regular user creates their own directory structure in their home > directory (where they have full write permissions) > 2. The user creates a fake /etc/passwd file within this structure, > containing a password hash for root that they know > 3. The user then chroots into this fake filesystem > 4. Inside the chroot, when the user runs su (or similar authentication > utilities), these programs read what they believe is the system's > /etc/passwd file - but it's actually the attacker's crafted version > 5. The su command validates the password against the fake password > file and grants root privileges > > > пт, 1 авг. 2025 г. в 14:20, Jason Bacon <bacon4000@gmail.com>: > >> >> I'm wondering if there is any way to perform a simple chroot without >> having root privileges. The goal is to test software builds with access >> to a limited set of dependencies, as poudriere does, but outside the >> FreeBSD ports system, and in some cases on hosts where the user has no >> root access. This will prevent configure scripts with hard-coded search >> paths from finding things we don't want them to find. Portability to >> other POSIX platforms would be desirable as well, but is not essential. >> >> It's not clear to me why chroot() wasn't designed to support this use >> case. There's lots of documentation stating that it's a security risk, >> but I don't see why it couldn't have been designed to be run by a >> regular user without escalating privileges inside the chroot. I.e. if >> user "joe" does such a user-level chroot call, then all chrooted >> processes run as "joe", but with the path of the chroot dir prepended to >> every open() call (after $CWD is prepended to relative paths, of >> course), so that processes can only access files in the chroot dir. >> User "joe" would have the same privileges inside the chroot that he has >> on the host. One of the other security concerns mentioned is jail >> breaks, but if joe managed to escape the chroot, he'd only be hurting >> himself by borking the test build, so that's not a concern here. >> >> It might be possible to port fakechroot >> (https://github.com/dex4er/fakechroot), proot >> (https://github.com/proot-me/proot), or something similar, but is there >> anything else on FreeBSD that can do this? >> >> Thanks, >> >> Jason >> >> -- >> Life is a game. Play hard. Play fair. Have fun. >> >> >>