A Landlock security policy is a set of access rights (e.g., open a file in read-only, make a directory, etc.) tied to a file hierarchy. Such policy can be configured and enforced by processes for themselves using three system calls:
To be able to use these system calls, the running kernel must support Landlock and it must be enabled at boot time.
A file can only receive these access rights:
A directory can receive access rights related to files or directories. The following access right is applied to the directory itself, and the directories beneath it:
However, the following access rights only apply to the content of a directory, not the directory itself:
One policy layer grants access to a file path if at least one of its rules encountered on the path grants the access. A sandboxed thread can only access a file path if all its enforced policy layers grant the access as well as all the other system access controls (e.g., filesystem DAC, other LSM policies, etc.).
A bind mount mirrors a source file hierarchy to a destination. The destination hierarchy is then composed of the exact same files, on which Landlock rules can be tied, either via the source or the destination path. These rules restrict access when they are encountered on a path, which means that they can restrict access to multiple file hierarchies at the same time, whether these hierarchies are the result of bind mounts or not.
An OverlayFS mount point consists of upper and lower layers. These layers are combined in a merge directory, result of the mount point. This merge hierarchy may include files from the upper and lower layers, but modifications performed on the merge hierarchy only reflect on the upper layer. From a Landlock policy point of view, each of the OverlayFS layers and merge hierarchies is standalone and contains its own set of files and directories, which is different from a bind mount. A policy restricting an OverlayFS layer will not restrict the resulted merged hierarchy, and vice versa. Landlock users should then only think about file hierarchies they want to allow access to, regardless of the underlying filesystem.
When a thread sandboxes itself, we have the guarantee that the related security policy will stay enforced on all this thread's descendants. This allows creating standalone and modular security policies per application, which will automatically be composed between themselves according to their runtime parent policies.
It is currently not possible to restrict some file-related actions accessible through these system call families: chdir(2), truncate(2), stat(2), flock(2), chmod(2), chown(2), setxattr(2), utime(2), ioctl(2), fcntl(2), access(2). Future Landlock evolutions will enable to restrict them.
struct landlock_ruleset_attr attr = {0}; int ruleset_fd;
attr.handled_access_fs =
LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_EXECUTE |
LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_WRITE_FILE |
LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_READ_FILE |
LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_READ_DIR |
LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_REMOVE_DIR |
LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_REMOVE_FILE |
LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_MAKE_CHAR |
LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_MAKE_DIR |
LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_MAKE_REG |
LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_MAKE_SOCK |
LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_MAKE_FIFO |
LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_MAKE_BLOCK |
LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_MAKE_SYM;
ruleset_fd = landlock_create_ruleset(&attr, sizeof(attr), 0);
if (ruleset_fd == -1) {
perror("Failed to create a ruleset");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
We can now add a new rule to this ruleset thanks to the returned file descriptor referring to this ruleset. The rule will only allow reading the file hierarchy /usr. Without another rule, write actions would then be denied by the ruleset. To add /usr to the ruleset, we open it with the O_PATH flag and fill the struct landlock_path_beneath_attr with this file descriptor.
struct landlock_path_beneath_attr path_beneath = {0}; int err;
path_beneath.allowed_access =
LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_EXECUTE |
LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_READ_FILE |
LANDLOCK_ACCESS_FS_READ_DIR;
path_beneath.parent_fd = open("/usr", O_PATH | O_CLOEXEC);
if (path_beneath.parent_fd == -1) {
perror("Failed to open file");
close(ruleset_fd);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
err = landlock_add_rule(ruleset_fd, LANDLOCK_RULE_PATH_BENEATH,
&path_beneath, 0);
close(path_beneath.parent_fd);
if (err) {
perror("Failed to update ruleset");
close(ruleset_fd);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
We now have a ruleset with one rule allowing read access to /usr while denying all other handled accesses for the filesystem. The next step is to restrict the current thread from gaining more privileges (e.g., thanks to a set-user-ID binary).
if (prctl(PR_SET_NO_NEW_PRIVS, 1, 0, 0, 0)) {
perror("Failed to restrict privileges");
close(ruleset_fd);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
The current thread is now ready to sandbox itself with the ruleset.
if (landlock_restrict_self(ruleset_fd, 0)) {
perror("Failed to enforce ruleset");
close(ruleset_fd);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
close(ruleset_fd);
If the landlock_restrict_self(2) system call succeeds, the current thread is now restricted and this policy will be enforced on all its subsequently created children as well. Once a thread is landlocked, there is no way to remove its security policy; only adding more restrictions is allowed. These threads are now in a new Landlock domain, merge of their parent one (if any) with the new ruleset.
Full working code can be found in