ArgTrick

Allows you to do regexp substitution on paths passed to system calls. This can be used to generate something chroot-like (for example), or to fake file you can not overwrite.

Examples:
--trick=Arg:s1=['^/'];s2=['/strange_chroot_jail']
--trick=Arg:s1=['^/etc/passwd'];s2=['/etc/termcap']

BoxTrick

Unknown

CountTrick

Counts the system calls and signals for each process and reports after all processes have terminated.

DelayTrick

Puts a delay before each system call. The 'delay' parameter specifies the delay in seconds (as a float). The default delay is one second.

DosTrick

Tries to prevent DoS attacks.

The parameters 'maxmem' and 'maxproc' each specify limit (on memory and number of processes). If that limit is exceeded, application is killed. Memory limit is expressed in megabytes. Default values are 100 megabytes and 50 processes allowed.

Example:
--trick=DoS:maxmem=100;maxproc=50

This is tricky. We do not want to duplicate kernel's memory metering, and we do not want to ask kernel how much memory applications occupy after each change. Therefore, we do tricks: we maintain variable grace, and try to somehow compute how much memory in worst case processes could consume. If it is below grace, we lower grace and just let process allocate. If not, we do full recomputation and set grace back to some value.

mmap and brk operations are pretty common, still need to be watched by this trick. That means that slowdown from this trick is big.

FixFlashTrick

This works around a bug in the Macromedia Flash plugin which will cause Netscape to hang when a Flash object is encountered but /dev/dsp cannot be opened (because it's in use, perhaps by esd). Access will fail (and there will be no Flash sound).

GoodDiscTrick

Unknown

GuessPasswordTrick

This is exceedingly lame, but sometimes I forget the exact spelling of a password I haven't used in a long time. It's pretty easy to whip up a little script (see example) to cycle through all the combinations, but some programs only take passwords from /dev/tty, making them hard to script. This trick does the stuffing.

#!/bin/sh
for i in I i; do
    for o in o 0; do
        for p in '' . '?'; do
sf --tri=GuessPassword":guess='${i}s that my passw${o}rd${p}\n'" pgp -d /tmp/foo.pgp
        done
    done
done

NetFailTrick

Causes calls to connect to fail with error EHOSTUNREACH, and calls to listen to fail with EOPNOTSUPP.

NetThrottleTrick

Limit network bandwidth usage, by delaying network I/O calls. This trick has a Gtk GUI to allow interactive control of the bandwidth limit. An optional parameter 'bps' sets the initial limit, in bytes per second.

If the GUI is closed by the user (or should crash), the application will continue with the last set limit. If the limit was 0, however, it will be reset to unlimited (rather than leaving the application hung).

NetTrick

Restricts network access.

Anyway, you can now filter network access in term of what addresses are passed and where. You can pass filter=['-TCP 195\.113.*'] to dissallow any connections to 195.113 network. (Notice that passed value is regexp and that it is allow/deny trick. [I know that using regexps for network matching is not ideal, but you'll probably want to limit to a small set of machines, anyway, so it should not hurt much.]

Notice that connect and bind is not separated. It probably should be.

NoClose123Trick

Do not let processes close fd 123. (see Scratch trick)

NoKillTrick

Do not let traced processes to kill outside sandbox. Do not allow them to use ptrace(), since ptrace() does not work inside sandbox, and could be used to do anything outside sandbox.

Unless kernel goes _really_ crazy (like an out-of-memory situation) and kills process without telling us (which just should not happen), this is safe. Process can not go away before we are notified, therefore there are no races with pids wrapping around.

NoMunmapTrick

Does not let traced process play with force-mmaped memory from scratch module.

Alternatively, pass start and end addresses of memory you don't want processes to play with.

ParanoiaTrick

This trick is truly paranoid: it denies all syscalls it does not know because they might be potentially harmfull.

PathSandboxTrick

Restricts filesystem access to paths specified by config file.

Format of config file is as follows:

path {allow, deny, allow_if_public} {read,write,ask} path

You are allowed to create lines like this:

			
path alllow_if_public read /
path allow read,write /dev/tty

On each operation, config is scanned from the beggining to the end. If path from config is start of current path, access is allowed or denied, and no further processing is done. Allow_if_public means that sandbox looks at access mode of given object. If is not readable for everyone, file is scanned further , otherwise access is allowed.

Notice that allow_if_public is slightly dangerous:

application: open /foo/bar
subterfugue: checks that /foo/bar is readable from other thread
you: rm /foo/bar; umask 700; echo "secret data" > /foo/bar
subterfugue: allows access to /foo/bar

Solution is not using allow_if_public. (Unfortunately, allow_if_public that said "denied" on non-existant files is not terribly usefull: applications like to open non-existant files for example when they search path.)

names like this. [Notice that if you did chmod instead of rm&umask, you'd be in danger even without subterfugue.]

If you add "allow ask /" line into config file, then "denied" accesses are not really denied, but user is prompted whether or not he really wants to perform given operation.

This syntax should be compatible with syntax used in janus.

Rot13Trick

Does a rot13 translation on all output done with the 'write' syscall.

ScratchTrick

Provides a safe copy area for arguments.

This trick should be as innermost (rightmost) as possible.

Notice that without this trick, and appropriate tricks to actually copy arguments (ArgTrick), traced applications may play nasty games with volatile memory, resulting in TraceTrick lying, SimplePathSandbox not being effective, etc. However, application would have to deliberately play races and in case of application being nasty of purpose you have to be very cautious.

SignalTrick

Ignore or map signals

SimplePathSandboxTrick

Restricts filesystem access to specified paths. The parameters 'read' and 'write' each specify a list of paths; for each path, access will be given to the file or directory tree specified.

Examples:
--trick=SimplePathSandbox:read=['/'];write=['.']
#Limit read and write ability
sf --trick=SimplePathSandbox:"read=['/'];write=['/dev/tty']" bash

(Note that '~' is not interpreted specially.)

Each path can be prefixed by a '-' to indicated that access to the path should be denied. This example would allow '/home' to be read, but not anything under '/home/pavel'.

Example:
--trick=SimplePathSandbox:read=['-/home/pavel','/home']

The first applicable path determines whether or not access is allowed. If no path is applicable, access is denied.

A diagnostic will be output each time an action is denied unless the 'quiet' parameter is set to a true value.

Network access will be blocked unless the parameter 'net' is 1; if it is, access to all Unix domain sockets will be possible, even if not allowed by the 'read' or 'write' list (yes, this is a wart).

(This trick blocks the rarely used 'quotactl' and 'nfsservctl' calls, which are tricky to handle correctly.)

StdioTrick

This trick is truly paranoid: it denies all syscalls it does not know because they might do something wrong.

Code here is very ugly: we want to want even on unpatched 2.2.X. Unpatched 2.2.X can not deny syscall, so we at least patch all arguments to zeros on syscall being denied. This could be circumvented if RAM was mapped on page 0; therefore you should use NoMunmapTrick to prevent messing with page 0.

ThrottleIOTrick

Delays read and write calls so that the average I/O rate (via these calls) is limited. The 'bps' parameter is required and is the I/O limit, in bytes per second.

ThrottleReadIOTrick

Delays read calls so that the average I/O rate (via these calls) is limited. The 'bps' parameter is required and is the I/O limit, in bytes per second.

TimeWarpTrick

Warp time to adjust the time considered to be "now" and/or to run slower or faster than true elapsed time.

The float parameter 'delta' adjusts "now" relatively. So, for example, a delta of -10.5 would cause gettimeofday to return a time ten and a half seconds earlier than the true time.

The float parameter 'now' adjusts "now" absolutely. It is an absolute count of seconds since the epoch. Such values can be had from the date command, like so

--tri=TimeWarp:now=$(date --date='May 7' +%s)

or

--tri=TimeWarp:now=$(date --date='one week ago' +%s)

The float parameter 'w' is the warp factor. A factor of 1.0 corresponds to normal execution. A factor of 2.0 will make time pass at twice normal speed for the program; to you, it will seem to run "faster" (e.g., sleep(2) will actually sleep half as long, time(2) will return greater than normal value, etc.) The factor may be less than 1.0 to make time pass more slowly. It must be greater than 0.

Warp factors below 1 will probably be better tolerated by the application.

(Keep in mind that SUBTERFUGUE itself makes programs run somewhat slower, so the warp factors are relative.)

Any or all options can be combined.

#Clock runs slow
sf --trick=TimeWarp:w=0.1 xclock &

#Clock runs fast
sf --trick=TimeWarp:w=100 xclock &

#Run command in the past
sf --trick=TimeWarp:now=$(date --date='1 hour ago' +%s) xclock &
sf --trick=TimeWarp:now=$(date --date='2 hours ago' +%s) xclock &

sf --trick=TimeWarp:now=$(date --date='1 week ago' +%s) xclock &
sf --trick=TimeWarp:now=$(date --date='4 weeks ago' +%s) xclock &

TraceTrick

Traces system calls, signals, and process exit (similar to strace(1)). The 'call' parameter may specify a list of system call names; in this case, calls not in the list will not be traced.

#Trace app
sf --trick=Trace date

UmaskTrick

Forces sandboxed application not to use certain file permissions. For example does not allow apps to use setuid bit.


Compiled by William Stearns <wstearns@pobox.com>

Text is Copyright 200 Mike Coleman <mkc@users.sourceforge.net> and Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz>

Last edited: 11/15/01

Best viewed with something that can show web pages... <grin>