Sandboxing in Linux
I think your solutions must concentrate on analyzing the source code. I don't know any tools, and I think this would be pretty hard with C, but, for example, a Pascal program which doesn't include any modules would be pretty harmless in my opinion.
I want to create a Web app which would allow the user to upload some C code, and see the results of its execution (the code would be compiled on the server). The users are untrusted, which obviously has some huge security implications.
So I need to create some kind of sandbox for the apps. At the most basic level, I'd like to restrict access to the file system to some specified directories. I cannot use chroot jails directly, since the web app is not running as a privileged user. I guess a suid executable which sets up the jail would be an option.
The uploaded programs would be rather small, so they should execute quickly (a couple of seconds at most). Hence, I can kill the process after a preset timeout, but how do I ensure that it doesn't spawn new processes? Or if I can't, is killing the entire pgid a reliable method?
What would be the best way to go about this - other than "don't do it at all"? :) What other glaring security problems have I missed?
FWIW, the web app will be written in Python.