From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1754189AbaBZVLa (ORCPT ); Wed, 26 Feb 2014 16:11:30 -0500 Received: from mail-ob0-f174.google.com ([209.85.214.174]:46862 "EHLO mail-ob0-f174.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1754135AbaBZVL0 (ORCPT ); Wed, 26 Feb 2014 16:11:26 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <1393445473-15068-1-git-send-email-matthew.garrett@nebula.com> References: <1393445473-15068-1-git-send-email-matthew.garrett@nebula.com> Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2014 13:11:25 -0800 X-Google-Sender-Auth: gibaTnEdLh4-HVLnLyzTU-pc7lQ Message-ID: Subject: Re: Trusted kernel patchset for Secure Boot lockdown From: Kees Cook To: Matthew Garrett Cc: LKML , Greg KH , "H. Peter Anvin" , "linux-efi@vger.kernel.org" , James Morris , linux-security-module Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Wed, Feb 26, 2014 at 12:11 PM, Matthew Garrett wrote: > The conclusion we came to at Plumbers was that this patchset was basically > fine but that Linus hated the name "securelevel" more than I hate pickled > herring, so after thinking about this for a few months I've come up with > "Trusted Kernel". This flag indicates that the kernel is, via some > external mechanism, trusted and should behave that way. If firmware has > some way to verify the kernel, it can pass that information on. If userspace > has some way to verify the kernel, it can set the flag itself. However, > userspace should not attempt to use the flag as a means to verify that the > kernel was trusted - untrusted userspace could have set it on an untrusted > kernel, but by the same metric an untrusted kernel could just set it itself. > > If people object to this name then I swear to god that I will open a poll > on Phoronix to decide the next attempt and you will like that even less. For the Chrome OS use-case, it might be better described as "untrusted userspace", but that seems unfriendly. :) The "trusted kernel" name seems fine to me. -Kees -- Kees Cook Chrome OS Security