doc: ReSTify no_new_privs.txt

This updates no_new_privs documentation to ReST markup and adds it to
the user-space API documentation.

Signed-off-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>

1 files changed, 0 insertions, 57 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/prctl/no_new_privs.txt b/Documentation/prctl/no_new_privs.txt
deleted file mode 100644
index f7be84fba910..000000000000
--- a/Documentation/prctl/no_new_privs.txt
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,57 +0,0 @@
-The execve system call can grant a newly-started program privileges that
-its parent did not have.  The most obvious examples are setuid/setgid
-programs and file capabilities.  To prevent the parent program from
-gaining these privileges as well, the kernel and user code must be
-careful to prevent the parent from doing anything that could subvert the
-child.  For example:
-
- - The dynamic loader handles LD_* environment variables differently if
-   a program is setuid.
-
- - chroot is disallowed to unprivileged processes, since it would allow
-   /etc/passwd to be replaced from the point of view of a process that
-   inherited chroot.
-
- - The exec code has special handling for ptrace.
-
-These are all ad-hoc fixes.  The no_new_privs bit (since Linux 3.5) is a
-new, generic mechanism to make it safe for a process to modify its
-execution environment in a manner that persists across execve.  Any task
-can set no_new_privs.  Once the bit is set, it is inherited across fork,
-clone, and execve and cannot be unset.  With no_new_privs set, execve
-promises not to grant the privilege to do anything that could not have
-been done without the execve call.  For example, the setuid and setgid
-bits will no longer change the uid or gid; file capabilities will not
-add to the permitted set, and LSMs will not relax constraints after
-execve.
-
-To set no_new_privs, use prctl(PR_SET_NO_NEW_PRIVS, 1, 0, 0, 0).
-
-Be careful, though: LSMs might also not tighten constraints on exec
-in no_new_privs mode.  (This means that setting up a general-purpose
-service launcher to set no_new_privs before execing daemons may
-interfere with LSM-based sandboxing.)
-
-Note that no_new_privs does not prevent privilege changes that do not
-involve execve.  An appropriately privileged task can still call
-setuid(2) and receive SCM_RIGHTS datagrams.
-
-There are two main use cases for no_new_privs so far:
-
- - Filters installed for the seccomp mode 2 sandbox persist across
-   execve and can change the behavior of newly-executed programs.
-   Unprivileged users are therefore only allowed to install such filters
-   if no_new_privs is set.
-
- - By itself, no_new_privs can be used to reduce the attack surface
-   available to an unprivileged user.  If everything running with a
-   given uid has no_new_privs set, then that uid will be unable to
-   escalate its privileges by directly attacking setuid, setgid, and
-   fcap-using binaries; it will need to compromise something without the
-   no_new_privs bit set first.
-
-In the future, other potentially dangerous kernel features could become
-available to unprivileged tasks if no_new_privs is set.  In principle,
-several options to unshare(2) and clone(2) would be safe when
-no_new_privs is set, and no_new_privs + chroot is considerable less
-dangerous than chroot by itself.