We run containers as a non-root user (no effective capabilities).
Still, if a setuid binary is available in a container image, it could
potentially be used to give the user the default capabilities that the
container was started with. For Docker, the default set currently is:
- "CAP_CHOWN"
- "CAP_DAC_OVERRIDE"
- "CAP_FSETID"
- "CAP_FOWNER"
- "CAP_MKNOD"
- "CAP_NET_RAW"
- "CAP_SETGID"
- "CAP_SETUID"
- "CAP_SETFCAP"
- "CAP_SETPCAP"
- "CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE"
- "CAP_SYS_CHROOT"
- "CAP_KILL"
- "CAP_AUDIT_WRITE"
We'd rather prevent such a potential escalation by dropping ALL
capabilities.
The problem is nicely explained here: https://github.com/projectatomic/atomic-site/issues/203
This makes all containers (except mautrix-telegram and
mautrix-whatsapp), start as a non-root user.
We do this, because we don't trust some of the images.
In any case, we'd rather not trust ALL images and avoid giving
`root` access at all. We can't be sure they would drop privileges
or what they might do before they do it.
Because Postfix doesn't support running as non-root,
it had to be replaced by an Exim mail server.
The matrix-nginx-proxy nginx container image is patched up
(by replacing its main configuration) so that it can work as non-root.
It seems like there's no other good image that we can use and that is up-to-date
(https://hub.docker.com/r/nginxinc/nginx-unprivileged is outdated).
Likewise for riot-web (https://hub.docker.com/r/bubuntux/riot-web/),
we patch it up ourselves when starting (replacing the main nginx
configuration).
Ideally, it would be fixed upstream so we can simplify.
As suggested in #63 (Github issue), splitting the
playbook's logic into multiple roles will be beneficial for
maintainability.
This patch realizes this split. Still, some components
affect others, so the roles are not really independent of one
another. For example:
- disabling mxisd (`matrix_mxisd_enabled: false`), causes Synapse
and riot-web to reconfigure themselves with other (public)
Identity servers.
- enabling matrix-corporal (`matrix_corporal_enabled: true`) affects
how reverse-proxying (by `matrix-nginx-proxy`) is done, in order to
put matrix-corporal's gateway server in front of Synapse
We may be able to move away from such dependencies in the future,
at the expense of a more complicated manual configuration, but
it's probably not worth sacrificing the convenience we have now.
As part of this work, the way we do "start components" has been
redone now to use a loop, as suggested in #65 (Github issue).
This should make restarting faster and more reliable.
Sylvia van Os
Slavi Pantaleev