On Wed, Apr 26, 2023 at 12:54 PM David Trudgian
<dave(a)trudgian.net>
wrote:
>
> Dave, Jonathan,
>
> Thank you for the replies and actions after my original message r.e.
> the incompatible upgrades policy.
>
> I should now declare that I have an interest in how the discussion
> around the incompatible change for apptainer goes, due to being the
> packager and one of the upstream developers of singularity-ce... which
> is a fork from the same historic codebase as apptainer was.
>
> WIth my upstream hat on... Sylabs, my employer, has a response to the
> publication of the Apptainer project's CVE-2023-30549 available here:
>
>
https://sylabs.io/2023/04/response-to-cve-2023-30549/
>
> .... which is likely broader than is relevant for EPEL packaging, but
> takes a basic position that CVE-2023-30549 is a duplicate of
> CVE-2022-1184 and is a medium severity DoS kernel vuln, and not a high
> severity security issue in apptainer / singularity-ce etc.
>
> Trying to keep to what is likely of relevance for EPEL, CVE-2022-1184
> is a medium severity denial of service kernel vulnerability. It has a
> CVSS3.x base score of 5.5 -
>
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-1184
>
> The new CVE-2023-30549 opened by the Apptainer project against
> apptainer, and which the breaking change is aiming to address, depends
> on the presence of CVE-2022-1184, but has an (unreviewed) CVSS3.x base
> score of 7.1. I'm not clear how the Apptainer CVE bumps the score from
> 5.5 to 7.1 for the same underlying vulnerability -
>
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-30549
>
> Red Hat seem to agree with the 5.5 score on CVE-2022-1184, and the
> kernel vuln has been patched in EL8 and EL9:
>
>
https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/cve-2022-1184
>
> This means that in EPEL8 and EPEL9 the Apptainer vulnerability
> CVE-2023-30549 may be irrelevant. There is no direct impact due to the
> patches for CVE-2022-1184 that are in place, and the breaking change
> made to apptainer is, in my view, at least questionable. The argument
> about other possible but unproven kernel bugs doesn't seem to warrant
> duplicating the original CVE-2022-1184, raising its severity, and
> introducing a breaking change for EPEL8/9 users.
>
> Admittedly, according to Dave Dykstra's findings, CVE-2022-1184 has
> not been patched in EL7. However, it's not clear to me that this
> justifies CVE-2023-30549, though a defense-in-depth strategy of
> disabling, or allowing users to disable use of extfs images in
> apptainer-suid on EL7 might be warranted. I'm not clear how EPEL
> packages are expected to handle (if at all) any "won't fix" security
> issues in components on which they depend.
>
> FWIW, upstream in singularity-ce we are currently adding the ability
> for extfs image mounts through the kernel to be disabled, but not
> disabling them by default - as this is a breaking change to important
> functionality, and the underlying CVE-2022-1184 has been patched in
> most distros. We aren't considering this a security fix in
> singularty-ce, but the addition of a defence-in-depth option for users
> of distros with unpatched extfs vulnerabilities.
>
> I'm hoping that the discussion / outcome w.r.t. apptainer will inform
> the approach for EPEL7 singularity-ce.
>
> Many Thanks,
>
> DT
>
> On Wed, Apr 26, 2023, at 5:31 PM, Jonathan Wright via epel-devel
> wrote:
> > Dave (Dykstra),
> >
> > The process is pretty well laid out at
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/epel/epel-policy-incompatible-upgrad...
> >
> > I think leaving the package in epel-testing for now is OK but you definitely
need to hold it from release repos until the policy is followed and the necessary
approvals are obtained from the EPEL steering committee.
> >
> > I can't currently find it in the docs but I think going ahead and opening an
issue at
https://pagure.io/epel/issues will help facilitate the process. I'm quite
sure that this is/was documented somewhere when submitted an incompatible update for
approval a few months back. You can see it at
https://pagure.io/epel/issue/212 which
might help make more sense of the process as well.
> >
> > On Wed, Apr 26, 2023 at 11:20 AM Dave Dykstra via epel-devel
<epel-devel(a)lists.fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> >> DT is correct, this change is subject to the EPEL incompatible change
> >> policy. apptainer-suid-1.1.8 by default disables mounting of ext3
> >> filesystems, because of CVE-2023-30549
> >>
https://github.com/apptainer/apptainer/security/advisories/GHSA-j4rf-7357...
> >> Most users don't use this feature, but a significant minority does.
> >> Apptainer has a non-setuid alternative for the same functionality if
> >> unprivileged user namespaces are available.
> >>
> >> The summary of the CVE is that the way that apptainer & singularity
> >> allow mounts of ext3 filesystems in setuid mode raises the severity of
> >> many ext4 filesystem CVEs (ext3 filesystems are implemented by the ext4
> >> driver). OS vendors consider those CVEs to be low or moderate priority
> >> because they assume that users do not have write access to the
> >> underlying bits of the filesystem, but apptainer/singularity setuid mode
> >> gives that access to users by default (before this release of apptainer).
> >> Since vendors don't see urgency to patch low/moderate CVEs, it can take
> >> a very long time for them to patch them and in fact RHEL7 is not patched
> >> for one in particular. All this information came from a reliable source,
> >> the owner of the ext4 kernel driver.
> >>
> >> I am sorry to see that I have already done one step too many according
> >> to the incompatible changes policy, and have made the release available
> >> to epel-testing. However, I think it's important to make it available
> >> that way for system administrators to install early. The large High
> >> Energy Physics community that I represent has security teams that want
> >> to be able to notify their site administrators to upgrade to respond to
> >> this high severity CVE, and it would be so much better if the
> >> announcement they send can say to install from epel-testing rather than
> >> having to provide URLs to download from koji.
> >>
> >> So, to the EPEL Steering Committee members: must I unpublish this update
> >> from testing, or may I leave it there and send an announcement to
> >> epel-announce that it is there and pending approval by the committee?
> >> The bodhi settings are set so they won't get auto-updated by karma or
> >> time.
> >>
> >> And another question: should I submit an epel ticket for this? The
> >> policy doesn't mention that.
> >>
> >> Dave
> >>
> >> On Wed, Apr 26, 2023 at 09:41:16AM +0100, David Trudgian wrote:
> >> > Subject: Re: apptainer 1.1.8-1 appears to be an incompatible upgrade
for apptainer-suid users
> >> >
> >> > Hello,
> >> >
> >> > The maintainer of the apptainer package has submitted updates to
version 1.1.8-1 against epel-testing:
> >> >
> >> >
https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-EPEL-2023-18a0e3fa23
> >> >
https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-EPEL-2023-44ff2475c4
> >> >
https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-EPEL-2023-b31211e2ce
> >> >
> >> > I believe that the update should be considered an incompatible upgrade,
requiring the incompatible upgrades policy to be followed, as it significantly changes
behaviour for users who have the apptainer-setuid sub-package installed.
> >> >
> >> > The update now disallows, by default, workflows that involve ext format
container images and overlays:
> >> >
> >> > ```
> >> > # Before update
> >> > $ apptainer exec sif-overlay.sif /bin/date
> >> > Wed Apr 26 09:12:37 BST 2023
> >> >
> >> > # Update to the testing package
> >> > $ sudo dnf update --enablerepo=epel-testing apptainer-suid
> >> >
> >> > # After update
> >> > $ apptainer exec sif-overlay.sif /bin/date
> >> > FATAL: configuration disallows users from mounting SIF extfs
partition in setuid mode, try --userns
> >> > ```
> >> >
> >> > I understand that the update is related to a security issue that
upstream has published:
> >> >
> >> > CVE-2023-30549 -
https://github.com/apptainer/apptainer/security/advisories/GHSA-j4rf-7357...
> >> >
> >> > However, I don't think this exempts the update from the
incompatible upgrades policy?
> >> >
> >> > I'd also like to note that CVE-2023-30549 is dependent on and
potentially a duplicate of CVE-2022-1184, which has been patched in EL8 and EL9, but
admittedly not in EL7.
> >> >
> >> > Thanks,
> >> >
> >> > DT
> >> >
> >> >
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> >
> >
> > --
> > Jonathan Wright
> > AlmaLinux Foundation
> > Mattermost: chat
<
https://chat.almalinux.org/almalinux/messages/@jonathan>
> > _______________________________________________
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Thanks everyone for the detailed information provided so far. We
should evaluate each of these updates separately since the conditions
surrounding them are not the same across the board.
EPEL 9:
RHEL 9 has the fix for CVE-2022-1184. CVE-2023-30549 requires
CVE-2022-1184 to be unpatched. Because of this I'm opposed to an
incompatible update for apptainer in EPEL 9. Apptainer in EPEL 9
should be modified to set the "allow setuid-mount extfs" option to yes
for compatibility, even if that isn't the upstream default.
Can you not set the option to no for a new install and yes if it is an
upgrade? You may need to be a bit cuter if it is upgraded again to see
what it is upgrading from or read the old value first and don't update
it.
EPEL 8:
RHEL 8 has the fix for CVE-2022-1184. CVE-2023-30549 requires
CVE-2022-1184 to be unpatched. Because of this I'm opposed to an
incompatible update for apptainer in EPEL 8. Apptainer in EPEL 8
should be modified to set the "allow setuid-mount extfs" option to yes
for compatibility, even if that isn't the upstream default.
Same comment applies.
> EPEL 7:
>
> RHEL 7 appears to be vulnerable to CVE-2022-1184. CVE-2023-30549
> requires CVE-2022-1184 to be unpatched, so unlike EPEL 8 and EPEL 9 it
> actually impacts the EPEL 7 apptainer package. This CVE has not yet
> been rated by NVD. If the NVD assigns a rating of high (matching the
> CNA suggestion) or critical, I would be agreeable to an incompatible
> update of apptainer in EPEL 7. If the NVD assigns a rating of medium
> (matching CVE-2022-1184) or low, I would be opposed to an incompatible
> update of apptainer in EPEL 7.
>
>