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From: James Morris <jmorris@namei.org>
To: James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@HansenPartnership.com>
Cc: "ksummit-discuss@lists.linuxfoundation.org"
	<ksummit-discuss@lists.linuxfoundation.org>,
	Emily Ratliff <eratliff@linuxfoundation.org>
Subject: Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH TOPIC] Kernel Hardening
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 2015 06:17:30 +1000 (AEST)	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <alpine.LRH.2.20.1508250612360.22949@namei.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <1440446941.2201.32.camel@HansenPartnership.com>

On Mon, 24 Aug 2015, James Bottomley wrote:

> Um, forgive me for being dense, but doesn't fixing the flaws stop their
> exploitation?  In any event, Hardening means "reducing the attack
> surface" and that encompasses both active and passive means (including
> actual bug fixing).

Hardening is mitigating those flaws.  You'll never find every flaw, but 
you can mitigate against entire classes of flaws being exploited.

> >  The
> > hardening the kernel needs is about taking away exploitation tools,
> > not killing bugs. (Though killing bugs is still great.)
> 
> It's both.  One of the old standards for attacking C code was buffer
> overruns.  Remove those via detection tools and you reduce the attack
> surface.

In this case, we're specifically talking about hardening the kernel to 
mitigate exploitation of flaws.  Kernel self-protection may be a better 
term (and recently surfaced in an NSA presentation at LSS: p.23 of

http://kernsec.org/files/lss2015/lss2015_selinuxinandroidlollipopandm_smalley.pdf


-- 
James Morris
<jmorris@namei.org>

  reply	other threads:[~2015-08-24 20:17 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 57+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2015-08-24  4:20 [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH TOPIC] Kernel Hardening James Morris
2015-08-24 11:46 ` Jiri Kosina
2015-08-24 11:56   ` James Morris
2015-08-24 17:17     ` Kees Cook
2015-08-24 17:28       ` Andy Lutomirski
2015-08-24 17:39         ` Julia Lawall
2015-08-24 18:01         ` Kees Cook
2015-08-24 18:19           ` Andy Lutomirski
2015-08-24 18:57             ` Kees Cook
2015-08-24 18:52       ` Thomas Gleixner
2015-08-24 18:59         ` Thomas Gleixner
2015-08-24 19:00         ` Kees Cook
2015-08-24 22:05           ` Greg KH
2015-08-25  0:51             ` Rafael J. Wysocki
2015-08-31 20:10             ` Eric W. Biederman
2015-08-31 20:22               ` josh
2015-08-26 20:51       ` Kees Cook
2015-08-26 21:10         ` Matthew Garrett
2015-08-30  0:41           ` [Ksummit-discuss] Self nomination Matthew Garrett
2015-08-24 11:48 ` [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH TOPIC] Kernel Hardening Jiri Kosina
2015-08-24 12:29 ` Linus Walleij
2015-08-24 12:51   ` Jason Cooper
2015-08-24 16:35   ` Kees Cook
2015-08-24 20:09     ` James Bottomley
2015-08-24 20:17       ` James Morris [this message]
2015-08-24 20:46         ` Thomas Gleixner
2015-08-24 22:22           ` James Morris
2015-08-24 23:20             ` Kees Cook
2015-08-24 23:54               ` Theodore Ts'o
2015-08-25  0:06                 ` James Morris
2015-08-25  0:06                 ` Kees Cook
2015-08-27 22:08                   ` [Ksummit-discuss] grsecurity and kernel hardening Stephen Hemminger
2015-08-27 22:49                     ` James Bottomley
2015-08-27 23:03                       ` Stephen Hemminger
2015-08-24 23:04           ` [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH TOPIC] Kernel Hardening Kees Cook
2015-08-25 16:45           ` Luis R. Rodriguez
2015-08-24 22:57         ` Kees Cook
2015-08-24 23:25           ` Kees Cook
2015-08-24 20:28       ` josh
2015-08-24 22:55       ` Kees Cook
2015-08-24 23:13         ` Andy Lutomirski
2015-08-31 20:58         ` Eric W. Biederman
2015-09-01  9:03           ` Jiri Kosina
2015-09-01 16:52             ` Kees Cook
2015-09-01 16:50           ` Kees Cook
2015-08-25 15:15     ` Shuah Khan
2015-08-25 16:15       ` Kees Cook
2015-08-25 16:30       ` Mark Brown
2015-08-25 16:33         ` Kees Cook
2015-08-25 16:58         ` Shuah Khan
2015-09-22 12:24     ` Dan Carpenter
2015-09-22 12:55       ` Yves-Alexis Perez
2015-09-22 12:59       ` Julia Lawall
2015-09-22 18:02         ` Andy Lutomirski
2015-08-24 16:20 ` Aneesh Kumar K.V
2015-08-24 17:19   ` Kees Cook
2015-08-24 18:50     ` James Morris

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