linux-pinenote/Documentation/controllers/devices.txt

Device Whitelist Controller

1. Description:

Implement a cgroup to track and enforce open and mknod restrictions
on device files.  A device cgroup associates a device access
whitelist with each cgroup.  A whitelist entry has 4 fields.
'type' is a (all), c (char), or b (block).  'all' means it applies
to all types and all major and minor numbers.  Major and minor are
either an integer or * for all.  Access is a composition of r
(read), w (write), and m (mknod).

The root device cgroup starts with rwm to 'all'.  A child device
cgroup gets a copy of the parent.  Administrators can then remove
devices from the whitelist or add new entries.  A child cgroup can
never receive a device access which is denied by its parent.  However
when a device access is removed from a parent it will not also be
removed from the child(ren).

2. User Interface

An entry is added using devices.allow, and removed using
devices.deny.  For instance

	echo 'c 1:3 mr' > /cgroups/1/devices.allow

allows cgroup 1 to read and mknod the device usually known as
/dev/null.  Doing

	echo a > /cgroups/1/devices.deny

will remove the default 'a *:* rwm' entry. Doing

	echo a > /cgroups/1/devices.allow

will add the 'a *:* rwm' entry to the whitelist.

3. Security

Any task can move itself between cgroups.  This clearly won't
suffice, but we can decide the best way to adequately restrict
movement as people get some experience with this.  We may just want
to require CAP_SYS_ADMIN, which at least is a separate bit from
CAP_MKNOD.  We may want to just refuse moving to a cgroup which
isn't a descendent of the current one.  Or we may want to use
CAP_MAC_ADMIN, since we really are trying to lock down root.

CAP_SYS_ADMIN is needed to modify the whitelist or move another
task to a new cgroup.  (Again we'll probably want to change that).

A cgroup may not be granted more permissions than the cgroup's
parent has.