What security risks arise from granting unprivileged users the ability to perform overlay mounts?
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I'm writing a program to allow unprivileged users to mount overlay filesystems using a setuid binary. I've implemented a few safeguards to improve the program's security, but I'd like a more definitive checklist of potential security risks such a program might expose.
Here are the safeguards I've implemented so far:
- The program dissociates its mount namespace before performing any mounts, ensuring that other processes remain unaffected by the new mount. The program then runs a user-provided command inside that namespace.
- It verifies that every
lowerdir
is readable by the user. For sub-items within each lowerdir
, I assume that POSIX ACLs will prevent unauthorized access.
- It ensures that the upperdir
is both readable and writable by the user. Again, I rely on ACLs to enforce access restrictions on sub-items.
- It verifies that the workdir
is writable. Since the workdir
must be empty for OverlayFS to function, I consider the risk there to be minimal.
- It ensures that the mountpoint is writable by the user.
- The program resets the effective UID and GID to the real user’s IDs immediately after completing the mount operations.
These measures cover all the attacks I could foresee, but I suspect there may be additional risks I haven't accounted for. I would appreciate it if someone could point out any security issues before this goes into production.
Asked by B. Bergeron
(15 rep)
Jul 16, 2025, 09:00 PM
Last activity: Jul 24, 2025, 12:18 AM
Last activity: Jul 24, 2025, 12:18 AM