As described in commit 7a54947e727b ('Merge patch series "fs: allow changing idmappings"'), open_tree_attr(2) was necessary in order to allow for a detached mount to be created and have its idmappings changed without the risk of any racing threads operating on it. For this reason, mount_setattr(2) still does not allow for id-mappings to be changed.
However, there was a bug in commit 2462651ffa76 ("fs: allow changing idmappings") which allowed users to bypass this restriction by calling open_tree_attr(2) *without* OPEN_TREE_CLONE.
can_idmap_mount() prevented this bug from allowing an attached mountpoint's id-mapping from being modified (thanks to an is_anon_ns() check), but this still allows for detached (but visible) mounts to have their be id-mapping changed. This risks the same UAF and locking issues as described in the merge commit, and was likely unintentional.
For what it's worth, I found this while working on the open_tree_attr(2) man page, and was trying to figure out what open_tree_attr(2)'s behaviour was in the (slightly fruity) ~OPEN_TREE_CLONE case.
Signed-off-by: Aleksa Sarai cyphar@cyphar.com --- Aleksa Sarai (2): open_tree_attr: do not allow id-mapping changes without OPEN_TREE_CLONE selftests/mount_setattr: add smoke tests for open_tree_attr(2) bug
fs/namespace.c | 3 +- .../selftests/mount_setattr/mount_setattr_test.c | 77 ++++++++++++++++++---- 2 files changed, 66 insertions(+), 14 deletions(-) --- base-commit: 66639db858112bf6b0f76677f7517643d586e575 change-id: 20250808-open_tree_attr-bugfix-idmap-bb741166dc04
Best regards,