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seccomp(2) System Calls Manual seccomp(2)
seccomp - operate on Secure Computing state of the process
Standard C library (libc, -lc)
#include <linux/seccomp.h> /* Definition of SECCOMP_* constants */
#include <linux/filter.h> /* Definition of struct sock_fprog */
#include <linux/audit.h> /* Definition of AUDIT_* constants */
#include <linux/signal.h> /* Definition of SIG* constants */
#include <sys/ptrace.h> /* Definition of PTRACE_* constants */
#include <sys/syscall.h> /* Definition of SYS_* constants */
#include <unistd.h>
int syscall(SYS_seccomp, unsigned int operation, unsigned int flags,
void *args);
Note: glibc provides no wrapper for seccomp(), necessitating the
use of syscall(2).
The seccomp() system call operates on the Secure Computing
(seccomp) state of the calling process.
Currently, Linux supports the following operation values:
SECCOMP_SET_MODE_STRICT
The only system calls that the calling thread is permitted
to make are read(2), write(2), _exit(2) (but not
exit_group(2)), and sigreturn(2). Other system calls
result in the termination of the calling thread, or
termination of the entire process with the SIGKILL signal
when there is only one thread. Strict secure computing
mode is useful for number-crunching applications that may
need to execute untrusted byte code, perhaps obtained by
reading from a pipe or socket.
Note that although the calling thread can no longer call
sigprocmask(2), it can use sigreturn(2) to block all
signals apart from SIGKILL and SIGSTOP. This means that
alarm(2) (for example) is not sufficient for restricting
the process's execution time. Instead, to reliably
terminate the process, SIGKILL must be used. This can be
done by using timer_create(2) with SIGEV_SIGNAL and
sigev_signo set to SIGKILL, or by using setrlimit(2) to set
the hard limit for RLIMIT_CPU.
This operation is available only if the kernel is
configured with CONFIG_SECCOMP enabled.
The value of flags must be 0, and args must be NULL.
This operation is functionally identical to the call:
prctl(PR_SET_SECCOMP, SECCOMP_MODE_STRICT);
SECCOMP_SET_MODE_FILTER
The system calls allowed are defined by a pointer to a
Berkeley Packet Filter (BPF) passed via args. This
argument is a pointer to a struct sock_fprog; it can be
designed to filter arbitrary system calls and system call
arguments. If the filter is invalid, seccomp() fails,
returning EINVAL in errno.
If fork(2) or clone(2) is allowed by the filter, any child
processes will be constrained to the same system call
filters as the parent. If execve(2) is allowed, the
existing filters will be preserved across a call to
execve(2).
In order to use the SECCOMP_SET_MODE_FILTER operation,
either the calling thread must have the CAP_SYS_ADMIN
capability in its user namespace, or the thread must
already have the no_new_privs bit set. If that bit was not
already set by an ancestor of this thread, the thread must
make the following call:
prctl(PR_SET_NO_NEW_PRIVS, 1);
Otherwise, the SECCOMP_SET_MODE_FILTER operation fails and
returns EACCES in errno. This requirement ensures that an
unprivileged process cannot apply a malicious filter and
then invoke a set-user-ID or other privileged program using
execve(2), thus potentially compromising that program.
(Such a malicious filter might, for example, cause an
attempt to use setuid(2) to set the caller's user IDs to
nonzero values to instead return 0 without actually making
the system call. Thus, the program might be tricked into
retaining superuser privileges in circumstances where it is
possible to influence it to do dangerous things because it
did not actually drop privileges.)
If prctl(2) or seccomp() is allowed by the attached filter,
further filters may be added. This will increase
evaluation time, but allows for further reduction of the
attack surface during execution of a thread.
The SECCOMP_SET_MODE_FILTER operation is available only if
the kernel is configured with CONFIG_SECCOMP_FILTER
enabled.
When flags is 0, this operation is functionally identical
to the call:
prctl(PR_SET_SECCOMP, SECCOMP_MODE_FILTER, args);
The recognized flags are:
SECCOMP_FILTER_FLAG_LOG (since Linux 4.14)
All filter return actions except SECCOMP_RET_ALLOW
should be logged. An administrator may override
this filter flag by preventing specific actions from
being logged via the
/proc/sys/kernel/seccomp/actions_logged file.
SECCOMP_FILTER_FLAG_NEW_LISTENER (since Linux 5.0)
After successfully installing the filter program,
return a new user-space notification file
descriptor. (The close-on-exec flag is set for the
file descriptor.) When the filter returns
SECCOMP_RET_USER_NOTIF a notification will be sent
to this file descriptor.
At most one seccomp filter using the
SECCOMP_FILTER_FLAG_NEW_LISTENER flag can be
installed for a thread.
See seccomp_unotify(2) for further details.
SECCOMP_FILTER_FLAG_SPEC_ALLOW (since Linux 4.17)
Disable Speculative Store Bypass mitigation.
SECCOMP_FILTER_FLAG_TSYNC
When adding a new filter, synchronize all other
threads of the calling process to the same seccomp
filter tree. A "filter tree" is the ordered list of
filters attached to a thread. (Attaching identical
filters in separate seccomp() calls results in
different filters from this perspective.)
If any thread cannot synchronize to the same filter
tree, the call will not attach the new seccomp
filter, and will fail, returning the first thread ID
found that cannot synchronize. Synchronization will
fail if another thread in the same process is in
SECCOMP_MODE_STRICT or if it has attached new
seccomp filters to itself, diverging from the
calling thread's filter tree.
SECCOMP_GET_ACTION_AVAIL (since Linux 4.14)
Test to see if an action is supported by the kernel. This
operation is helpful to confirm that the kernel knows of a
more recently added filter return action since the kernel
treats all unknown actions as SECCOMP_RET_KILL_PROCESS.
The value of flags must be 0, and args must be a pointer to
an unsigned 32-bit filter return action.
SECCOMP_GET_NOTIF_SIZES (since Linux 5.0)
Get the sizes of the seccomp user-space notification
structures. Since these structures may evolve and grow
over time, this command can be used to determine how much
memory to allocate for sending and receiving notifications.
The value of flags must be 0, and args must be a pointer to
a struct seccomp_notif_sizes, which has the following form:
struct seccomp_notif_sizes
__u16 seccomp_notif; /* Size of notification structure */
__u16 seccomp_notif_resp; /* Size of response structure */
__u16 seccomp_data; /* Size of 'struct seccomp_data' */
};
See seccomp_unotify(2) for further details.
Filters
When adding filters via SECCOMP_SET_MODE_FILTER, args points to a
filter program:
struct sock_fprog {
unsigned short len; /* Number of BPF instructions */
struct sock_filter *filter; /* Pointer to array of
BPF instructions */
};
Each program must contain one or more BPF instructions:
struct sock_filter { /* Filter block */
__u16 code; /* Actual filter code */
__u8 jt; /* Jump true */
__u8 jf; /* Jump false */
__u32 k; /* Generic multiuse field */
};
When executing the instructions, the BPF program operates on the
system call information made available (i.e., use the BPF_ABS
addressing mode) as a (read-only) buffer of the following form:
struct seccomp_data {
int nr; /* System call number */
__u32 arch; /* AUDIT_ARCH_* value
(see <linux/audit.h>) */
__u64 instruction_pointer; /* CPU instruction pointer */
__u64 args[6]; /* Up to 6 system call arguments */
};
Because numbering of system calls varies between architectures and
some architectures (e.g., x86-64) allow user-space code to use the
calling conventions of multiple architectures (and the convention
being used may vary over the life of a process that uses execve(2)
to execute binaries that employ the different conventions), it is
usually necessary to verify the value of the arch field.
It is strongly recommended to use an allow-list approach whenever
possible because such an approach is more robust and simple. A
deny-list will have to be updated whenever a potentially dangerous
system call is added (or a dangerous flag or option if those are
deny-listed), and it is often possible to alter the representation
of a value without altering its meaning, leading to a deny-list
bypass. See also Caveats below.
The arch field is not unique for all calling conventions. The
x86-64 ABI and the x32 ABI both use AUDIT_ARCH_X86_64 as arch, and
they run on the same processors. Instead, the mask
__X32_SYSCALL_BIT is used on the system call number to tell the
two ABIs apart.
This means that a policy must either deny all syscalls with
__X32_SYSCALL_BIT or it must recognize syscalls with and without
__X32_SYSCALL_BIT set. A list of system calls to be denied based
on nr that does not also contain nr values with __X32_SYSCALL_BIT
set can be bypassed by a malicious program that sets
__X32_SYSCALL_BIT.
Additionally, kernels prior to Linux 5.4 incorrectly permitted nr
in the ranges 512-547 as well as the corresponding non-x32
syscalls ORed with __X32_SYSCALL_BIT. For example, nr == 521 and
nr == (101 | __X32_SYSCALL_BIT) would result in invocations of
ptrace(2) with potentially confused x32-vs-x86_64 semantics in the
kernel. Policies intended to work on kernels before Linux 5.4
must ensure that they deny or otherwise correctly handle these
system calls. On Linux 5.4 and newer, such system calls will fail
with the error ENOSYS, without doing anything.
The instruction_pointer field provides the address of the machine-
language instruction that performed the system call. This might
be useful in conjunction with the use of /proc/pid/maps to perform
checks based on which region (mapping) of the program made the
system call. (Probably, it is wise to lock down the mmap(2) and
mprotect(2) system calls to prevent the program from subverting
such checks.)
When checking values from args, keep in mind that arguments are
often silently truncated before being processed, but after the
seccomp check. For example, this happens if the i386 ABI is used
on an x86-64 kernel: although the kernel will normally not look
beyond the 32 lowest bits of the arguments, the values of the full
64-bit registers will be present in the seccomp data. A less
surprising example is that if the x86-64 ABI is used to perform a
system call that takes an argument of type int, the more-
significant half of the argument register is ignored by the system
call, but visible in the seccomp data.
A seccomp filter returns a 32-bit value consisting of two parts:
the most significant 16 bits (corresponding to the mask defined by
the constant SECCOMP_RET_ACTION_FULL) contain one of the "action"
values listed below; the least significant 16-bits (defined by the
constant SECCOMP_RET_DATA) are "data" to be associated with this
return value.
If multiple filters exist, they are all executed, in reverse order
of their addition to the filter tree—that is, the most recently
installed filter is executed first. (Note that all filters will
be called even if one of the earlier filters returns
SECCOMP_RET_KILL. This is done to simplify the kernel code and to
provide a tiny speed-up in the execution of sets of filters by
avoiding a check for this uncommon case.) The return value for
the evaluation of a given system call is the first-seen action
value of highest precedence (along with its accompanying data)
returned by execution of all of the filters.
In decreasing order of precedence, the action values that may be
returned by a seccomp filter are:
SECCOMP_RET_KILL_PROCESS (since Linux 4.14)
This value results in immediate termination of the process,
with a core dump. The system call is not executed. By
contrast with SECCOMP_RET_KILL_THREAD below, all threads in
the thread group are terminated. (For a discussion of
thread groups, see the description of the CLONE_THREAD flag
in clone(2).)
The process terminates as though killed by a SIGSYS signal.
Even if a signal handler has been registered for SIGSYS,
the handler will be ignored in this case and the process
always terminates. To a parent process that is waiting on
this process (using waitpid(2) or similar), the returned
wstatus will indicate that its child was terminated as
though by a SIGSYS signal.
SECCOMP_RET_KILL_THREAD (or SECCOMP_RET_KILL)
This value results in immediate termination of the thread
that made the system call. The system call is not
executed. Other threads in the same thread group will
continue to execute.
The thread terminates as though killed by a SIGSYS signal.
See SECCOMP_RET_KILL_PROCESS above.
Before Linux 4.11, any process terminated in this way would
not trigger a coredump (even though SIGSYS is documented in
signal(7) as having a default action of termination with a
core dump). Since Linux 4.11, a single-threaded process
will dump core if terminated in this way.
With the addition of SECCOMP_RET_KILL_PROCESS in Linux
4.14, SECCOMP_RET_KILL_THREAD was added as a synonym for
SECCOMP_RET_KILL, in order to more clearly distinguish the
two actions.
Note: the use of SECCOMP_RET_KILL_THREAD to kill a single
thread in a multithreaded process is likely to leave the
process in a permanently inconsistent and possibly corrupt
state.
SECCOMP_RET_TRAP
This value results in the kernel sending a thread-directed
SIGSYS signal to the triggering thread. (The system call
is not executed.) Various fields will be set in the
siginfo_t structure (see sigaction(2)) associated with
signal:
• si_signo will contain SIGSYS.
• si_call_addr will show the address of the system call
instruction.
• si_syscall and si_arch will indicate which system call
was attempted.
• si_code will contain SYS_SECCOMP.
• si_errno will contain the SECCOMP_RET_DATA portion of
the filter return value.
The program counter will be as though the system call
happened (i.e., the program counter will not point to the
system call instruction). The return value register will
contain an architecture-dependent value; if resuming
execution, set it to something appropriate for the system
call. (The architecture dependency is because replacing it
with ENOSYS could overwrite some useful information.)
SECCOMP_RET_ERRNO
This value results in the SECCOMP_RET_DATA portion of the
filter's return value being passed to user space as the
errno value without executing the system call.
SECCOMP_RET_USER_NOTIF (since Linux 5.0)
Forward the system call to an attached user-space
supervisor process to allow that process to decide what to
do with the system call. If there is no attached
supervisor (either because the filter was not installed
with the SECCOMP_FILTER_FLAG_NEW_LISTENER flag or because
the file descriptor was closed), the filter returns ENOSYS
(similar to what happens when a filter returns
SECCOMP_RET_TRACE and there is no tracer). See
seccomp_unotify(2) for further details.
Note that the supervisor process will not be notified if
another filter returns an action value with a precedence
greater than SECCOMP_RET_USER_NOTIF.
SECCOMP_RET_TRACE
When returned, this value will cause the kernel to attempt
to notify a ptrace(2)-based tracer prior to executing the
system call. If there is no tracer present, the system
call is not executed and returns a failure status with
errno set to ENOSYS.
A tracer will be notified if it requests
PTRACE_O_TRACESECCOMP using ptrace(PTRACE_SETOPTIONS). The
tracer will be notified of a PTRACE_EVENT_SECCOMP and the
SECCOMP_RET_DATA portion of the filter's return value will
be available to the tracer via PTRACE_GETEVENTMSG.
The tracer can skip the system call by changing the system
call number to -1. Alternatively, the tracer can change
the system call requested by changing the system call to a
valid system call number. If the tracer asks to skip the
system call, then the system call will appear to return the
value that the tracer puts in the return value register.
Before Linux 4.8, the seccomp check will not be run again
after the tracer is notified. (This means that, on older
kernels, seccomp-based sandboxes must not allow use of
ptrace(2)—even of other sandboxed processes—without extreme
care; ptracers can use this mechanism to escape from the
seccomp sandbox.)
Note that a tracer process will not be notified if another
filter returns an action value with a precedence greater
than SECCOMP_RET_TRACE.
SECCOMP_RET_LOG (since Linux 4.14)
This value results in the system call being executed after
the filter return action is logged. An administrator may
override the logging of this action via the
/proc/sys/kernel/seccomp/actions_logged file.
SECCOMP_RET_ALLOW
This value results in the system call being executed.
If an action value other than one of the above is specified, then
the filter action is treated as either SECCOMP_RET_KILL_PROCESS
(since Linux 4.14) or SECCOMP_RET_KILL_THREAD (in Linux 4.13 and
earlier).
/proc interfaces
The files in the directory /proc/sys/kernel/seccomp provide
additional seccomp information and configuration:
actions_avail (since Linux 4.14)
A read-only ordered list of seccomp filter return actions
in string form. The ordering, from left-to-right, is in
decreasing order of precedence. The list represents the
set of seccomp filter return actions supported by the
kernel.
actions_logged (since Linux 4.14)
A read-write ordered list of seccomp filter return actions
that are allowed to be logged. Writes to the file do not
need to be in ordered form but reads from the file will be
ordered in the same way as the actions_avail file.
It is important to note that the value of actions_logged
does not prevent certain filter return actions from being
logged when the audit subsystem is configured to audit a
task. If the action is not found in the actions_logged
file, the final decision on whether to audit the action for
that task is ultimately left up to the audit subsystem to
decide for all filter return actions other than
SECCOMP_RET_ALLOW.
The "allow" string is not accepted in the actions_logged
file as it is not possible to log SECCOMP_RET_ALLOW
actions. Attempting to write "allow" to the file will fail
with the error EINVAL.
Audit logging of seccomp actions
Since Linux 4.14, the kernel provides the facility to log the
actions returned by seccomp filters in the audit log. The kernel
makes the decision to log an action based on the action type,
whether or not the action is present in the actions_logged file,
and whether kernel auditing is enabled (e.g., via the kernel boot
option audit=1). The rules are as follows:
• If the action is SECCOMP_RET_ALLOW, the action is not logged.
• Otherwise, if the action is either SECCOMP_RET_KILL_PROCESS or
SECCOMP_RET_KILL_THREAD, and that action appears in the
actions_logged file, the action is logged.
• Otherwise, if the filter has requested logging (the
SECCOMP_FILTER_FLAG_LOG flag) and the action appears in the
actions_logged file, the action is logged.
• Otherwise, if kernel auditing is enabled and the process is
being audited (autrace(8)), the action is logged.
• Otherwise, the action is not logged.
On success, seccomp() returns 0. On error, if
SECCOMP_FILTER_FLAG_TSYNC was used, the return value is the ID of
the thread that caused the synchronization failure. (This ID is a
kernel thread ID of the type returned by clone(2) and gettid(2).)
On other errors, -1 is returned, and errno is set to indicate the
error.
seccomp() can fail for the following reasons:
EACCES The caller did not have the CAP_SYS_ADMIN capability in its
user namespace, or had not set no_new_privs before using
SECCOMP_SET_MODE_FILTER.
EBUSY While installing a new filter, the
SECCOMP_FILTER_FLAG_NEW_LISTENER flag was specified, but a
previous filter had already been installed with that flag.
EFAULT args was not a valid address.
EINVAL operation is unknown or is not supported by this kernel
version or configuration.
EINVAL The specified flags are invalid for the given operation.
EINVAL operation included BPF_ABS, but the specified offset was
not aligned to a 32-bit boundary or exceeded
sizeof(struct seccomp_data).
EINVAL A secure computing mode has already been set, and operation
differs from the existing setting.
EINVAL operation specified SECCOMP_SET_MODE_FILTER, but the filter
program pointed to by args was not valid or the length of
the filter program was zero or exceeded BPF_MAXINSNS (4096)
instructions.
ENOMEM Out of memory.
ENOMEM The total length of all filter programs attached to the
calling thread would exceed MAX_INSNS_PER_PATH (32768)
instructions. Note that for the purposes of calculating
this limit, each already existing filter program incurs an
overhead penalty of 4 instructions.
EOPNOTSUPP
operation specified SECCOMP_GET_ACTION_AVAIL, but the
kernel does not support the filter return action specified
by args.
ESRCH Another thread caused a failure during thread sync, but its
ID could not be determined.
Linux.
Linux 3.17.
Rather than hand-coding seccomp filters as shown in the example
below, you may prefer to employ the libseccomp library, which
provides a front-end for generating seccomp filters.
The Seccomp field of the /proc/pid/status file provides a method
of viewing the seccomp mode of a process; see proc(5).
seccomp() provides a superset of the functionality provided by the
prctl(2) PR_SET_SECCOMP operation (which does not support flags).
Since Linux 4.4, the ptrace(2) PTRACE_SECCOMP_GET_FILTER operation
can be used to dump a process's seccomp filters.
Architecture support for seccomp BPF
Architecture support for seccomp BPF filtering is available on the
following architectures:
• x86-64, i386, x32 (since Linux 3.5)
• ARM (since Linux 3.8)
• s390 (since Linux 3.8)
• MIPS (since Linux 3.16)
• ARM-64 (since Linux 3.19)
• PowerPC (since Linux 4.3)
• Tile (since Linux 4.3)
• PA-RISC (since Linux 4.6)
Caveats
There are various subtleties to consider when applying seccomp
filters to a program, including the following:
• Some traditional system calls have user-space implementations
in the vdso(7) on many architectures. Notable examples include
clock_gettime(2), gettimeofday(2), and time(2). On such
architectures, seccomp filtering for these system calls will
have no effect. (However, there are cases where the vdso(7)
implementations may fall back to invoking the true system call,
in which case seccomp filters would see the system call.)
• Seccomp filtering is based on system call numbers. However,
applications typically do not directly invoke system calls, but
instead call wrapper functions in the C library which in turn
invoke the system calls. Consequently, one must be aware of
the following:
• The glibc wrappers for some traditional system calls may
actually employ system calls with different names in the
kernel. For example, the exit(2) wrapper function actually
employs the exit_group(2) system call, and the fork(2)
wrapper function actually calls clone(2).
• The behavior of wrapper functions may vary across
architectures, according to the range of system calls
provided on those architectures. In other words, the same
wrapper function may invoke different system calls on
different architectures.
• Finally, the behavior of wrapper functions can change across
glibc versions. For example, in older versions, the glibc
wrapper function for open(2) invoked the system call of the
same name, but starting in glibc 2.26, the implementation
switched to calling openat(2) on all architectures.
The consequence of the above points is that it may be necessary to
filter for a system call other than might be expected. Various
manual pages in Section 2 provide helpful details about the
differences between wrapper functions and the underlying system
calls in subsections entitled C library/kernel differences.
Furthermore, note that the application of seccomp filters even
risks causing bugs in an application, when the filters cause
unexpected failures for legitimate operations that the application
might need to perform. Such bugs may not easily be discovered
when testing the seccomp filters if the bugs occur in rarely used
application code paths.
Seccomp-specific BPF details
Note the following BPF details specific to seccomp filters:
• The BPF_H and BPF_B size modifiers are not supported: all
operations must load and store (4-byte) words (BPF_W).
• To access the contents of the seccomp_data buffer, use the
BPF_ABS addressing mode modifier.
• The BPF_LEN addressing mode modifier yields an immediate mode
operand whose value is the size of the seccomp_data buffer.
The program below accepts four or more arguments. The first three
arguments are a system call number, a numeric architecture
identifier, and an error number. The program uses these values to
construct a BPF filter that is used at run time to perform the
following checks:
• If the program is not running on the specified architecture,
the BPF filter causes system calls to fail with the error
ENOSYS.
• If the program attempts to execute the system call with the
specified number, the BPF filter causes the system call to
fail, with errno being set to the specified error number.
The remaining command-line arguments specify the pathname and
additional arguments of a program that the example program should
attempt to execute using execv(3) (a library function that employs
the execve(2) system call). Some example runs of the program are
shown below.
First, we display the architecture that we are running on (x86-64)
and then construct a shell function that looks up system call
numbers on this architecture:
$ uname -m;
x86_64
$ syscall_nr() {
cat /usr/src/linux/arch/x86/syscalls/syscall_64.tbl | \
awk '$2 != "x32" && $3 == "'$1'" { print $1 }'
};
When the BPF filter rejects a system call (case [2] above), it
causes the system call to fail with the error number specified on
the command line. In the experiments shown here, we'll use error
number 99:
$ errno 99;
EADDRNOTAVAIL 99 Cannot assign requested address
In the following example, we attempt to run the command whoami(1),
but the BPF filter rejects the execve(2) system call, so that the
command is not even executed:
$ syscall_nr execve;
59
$ ./a.out;
Usage: ./a.out <syscall_nr> <arch> <errno> <prog> [<args>]
Hint for <arch>: AUDIT_ARCH_I386: 0x40000003
AUDIT_ARCH_X86_64: 0xC000003E
$ ./a.out 59 0xC000003E 99 /bin/whoami;
execv: Cannot assign requested address
In the next example, the BPF filter rejects the write(2) system
call, so that, although it is successfully started, the whoami(1)
command is not able to write output:
$ syscall_nr write;
1
$ ./a.out 1 0xC000003E 99 /bin/whoami;
In the final example, the BPF filter rejects a system call that is
not used by the whoami(1) command, so it is able to successfully
execute and produce output:
$ syscall_nr preadv;
295
$ ./a.out 295 0xC000003E 99 /bin/whoami;
cecilia
Program source
#include <linux/audit.h>
#include <linux/filter.h>
#include <linux/seccomp.h>
#include <stddef.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <sys/prctl.h>
#include <sys/syscall.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#define X32_SYSCALL_BIT 0x40000000
#define ARRAY_SIZE(arr) (sizeof(arr) / sizeof((arr)[0]))
static int
install_filter(int syscall_nr, unsigned int t_arch, int f_errno)
{
unsigned int upper_nr_limit = 0xffffffff;
/* Assume that AUDIT_ARCH_X86_64 means the normal x86-64 ABI
(in the x32 ABI, all system calls have bit 30 set in the
'nr' field, meaning the numbers are >= X32_SYSCALL_BIT). */
if (t_arch == AUDIT_ARCH_X86_64)
upper_nr_limit = X32_SYSCALL_BIT - 1;
struct sock_filter filter[] = {
/* [0] Load architecture from 'seccomp_data' buffer into
accumulator. */
BPF_STMT(BPF_LD | BPF_W | BPF_ABS,
(offsetof(struct seccomp_data, arch))),
/* [1] Jump forward 5 instructions if architecture does not
match 't_arch'. */
BPF_JUMP(BPF_JMP | BPF_JEQ | BPF_K, t_arch, 0, 5),
/* [2] Load system call number from 'seccomp_data' buffer into
accumulator. */
BPF_STMT(BPF_LD | BPF_W | BPF_ABS,
(offsetof(struct seccomp_data, nr))),
/* [3] Check ABI - only needed for x86-64 in deny-list use
cases. Use BPF_JGT instead of checking against the bit
mask to avoid having to reload the syscall number. */
BPF_JUMP(BPF_JMP | BPF_JGT | BPF_K, upper_nr_limit, 3, 0),
/* [4] Jump forward 1 instruction if system call number
does not match 'syscall_nr'. */
BPF_JUMP(BPF_JMP | BPF_JEQ | BPF_K, syscall_nr, 0, 1),
/* [5] Matching architecture and system call: don't execute
the system call, and return 'f_errno' in 'errno'. */
BPF_STMT(BPF_RET | BPF_K,
SECCOMP_RET_ERRNO | (f_errno & SECCOMP_RET_DATA)),
/* [6] Destination of system call number mismatch: allow other
system calls. */
BPF_STMT(BPF_RET | BPF_K, SECCOMP_RET_ALLOW),
/* [7] Destination of architecture mismatch: kill process. */
BPF_STMT(BPF_RET | BPF_K, SECCOMP_RET_KILL_PROCESS),
};
struct sock_fprog prog = {
.len = ARRAY_SIZE(filter),
.filter = filter,
};
if (syscall(SYS_seccomp, SECCOMP_SET_MODE_FILTER, 0, &prog)) {
perror("seccomp");
return 1;
}
return 0;
}
int
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
if (argc < 5) {
fprintf(stderr, "Usage: "
"%s <syscall_nr> <arch> <errno> <prog> [<args>]\n"
"Hint for <arch>: AUDIT_ARCH_I386: 0x%X\n"
" AUDIT_ARCH_X86_64: 0x%X\n"
"\n", argv[0], AUDIT_ARCH_I386, AUDIT_ARCH_X86_64);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
if (prctl(PR_SET_NO_NEW_PRIVS, 1, 0, 0, 0)) {
perror("prctl");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
if (install_filter(strtol(argv[1], NULL, 0),
strtoul(argv[2], NULL, 0),
strtol(argv[3], NULL, 0)))
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
execv(argv[4], &argv[4]);
perror("execv");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
bpfc(1), strace(1), bpf(2), prctl(2), ptrace(2),
seccomp_unotify(2), sigaction(2), proc(5), signal(7), socket(7)
Various pages from the libseccomp library, including:
scmp_sys_resolver(1), seccomp_export_bpf(3), seccomp_init(3),
seccomp_load(3), and seccomp_rule_add(3).
The kernel source files Documentation/networking/filter.txt and
Documentation/userspace-api/seccomp_filter.rst (or
Documentation/prctl/seccomp_filter.txt before Linux 4.13).
McCanne, S. and Jacobson, V. (1992) The BSD Packet Filter: A New
Architecture for User-level Packet Capture, Proceedings of the
USENIX Winter 1993 Conference
⟨http://www.tcpdump.org/papers/bpf-usenix93.pdf⟩
Terence Kelly and Edison Fuh (2025) Sandboxing: Foolproof
Boundaries vs. Unbounded Foolishness
⟨https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3733699⟩
This page is part of the man-pages (Linux kernel and C library
user-space interface documentation) project. Information about
the project can be found at
⟨https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/⟩. If you have a bug report
for this manual page, see
⟨https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/docs/man-pages/man-pages.git/tree/CONTRIBUTING⟩.
This page was obtained from the tarball man-pages-6.15.tar.gz
fetched from
⟨https://mirrors.edge.kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/man-pages/⟩ on
2025-08-11. If you discover any rendering problems in this HTML
version of the page, or you believe there is a better or more up-
to-date source for the page, or you have corrections or
improvements to the information in this COLOPHON (which is not
part of the original manual page), send a mail to
[email protected]
Linux man-pages 6.15 2025-07-12 seccomp(2)
Pages that refer to this page: man(1), strace(1), bpf(2), close_range(2), landlock_restrict_self(2), PR_GET_SECCOMP(2const), PR_SET_NO_NEW_PRIVS(2const), PR_SET_SECCOMP(2const), ptrace(2), seccomp_unotify(2), sigaction(2), socketcall(2), syscalls(2), seccomp_api_get(3), seccomp_attr_set(3), proc_pid_seccomp(5), proc_pid_status(5), proc_sys_kernel(5), systemd.exec(5), capabilities(7), landlock(7), signal(7), vdso(7)
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