/self/mem. The special case for kernel threads really should be overridable by security modules. So consolidate these checks into ptrace.c:may_attach(). The check to always allow introspection is trivial. The check to allow access to kernel threads, and zombies is a little trickier. mem_read and mem_write already verify an mm exists so it isn't needed twice. proc_fd_access_allowed only doesn't want a check to verify task->mm exits, s it prevents all access to kernel threads. So just move the task->mm check into ptrace_attach where it is needed for practical reasons. I did a quick audit and none of the security modules in the kernel seem to care if they are passed a task without an mm into security_ptrace. So the above move should be safe and it allows security modules to come up with more restrictive policy. Signed-off-by: Eric W. Biederman Cc: Stephen Smalley Cc: Chris Wright Cc: James Morris Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds ]£<(›“