tree b18cc05a8fb8375a1d2788821f5894d2cdcfd117
parent 22e978f1f27dc0c9c20f42f0483d374b7a6d781e
author Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> 1351271107 -0700
committer Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> 1351271107 -0700

VFS: don't do protected {sym,hard}links by default

In commit 800179c9b8a1 ("This adds symlink and hardlink restrictions to
the Linux VFS"), the new link protections were enabled by default, in
the hope that no actual application would care, despite it being
technically against legacy UNIX (and documented POSIX) behavior.

However, it does turn out to break some applications.  It's rare, and
it's unfortunate, but it's unacceptable to break existing systems, so
we'll have to default to legacy behavior.

In particular, it has broken the way AFD distributes files, see

  http://www.dwd.de/AFD/

along with some legacy scripts.

Distributions can end up setting this at initrd time or in system
scripts: if you have security problems due to link attacks during your
early boot sequence, you have bigger problems than some kernel sysctl
setting. Do:

	echo 1 > /proc/sys/fs/protected_symlinks
	echo 1 > /proc/sys/fs/protected_hardlinks

to re-enable the link protections.

Alternatively, we may at some point introduce a kernel config option
that sets these kinds of "more secure but not traditional" behavioural
options automatically.

Reported-by: Nick Bowler <nbowler@elliptictech.com>
Reported-by: Holger Kiehl <Holger.Kiehl@dwd.de>
Cc: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
Cc: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
Cc: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu>
Cc: stable@kernel.org # v3.6
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>