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From: "Valdis Klētnieks" <valdis.kletnieks@vt.edu>
To: WyoFlippa <wyoflippa@gmail.com>
Cc: kernelnewbies@kernelnewbies.org
Subject: Re: Kernel drivers and IOCTLs
Date: Tue, 04 Feb 2020 23:01:03 -0500	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <165172.1580875263@turing-police> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <dd126362-b9bb-7c89-24b1-42ccb04cc430@gmail.com>


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On Tue, 04 Feb 2020 20:57:24 -0600, WyoFlippa said:

> I'm actually happy with the existing boot schemes. In this case, the
> driver is going to validate a signed image (U-Boot or Linux) before it
> is programmed into the flash memory. Although the image is validated
> when booting, it is one additional check to avoid surprises.

Is there a reason you're trying to do it from a driver rather than from userspace?

Under what realistic conditions will the kernel be trustable to do the validation
while userspace isn't? What's the threat model here - in other words, what
attack(s) are you trying to stop?  (This is a lot trickier than it looks - over the
decades, I've seen plenty of "Let's do this cargo-cult thing to stop attack X",
while overlooking the fact that any attacker who can do X can equally easily
do Y and still pwn the entire box.....)


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      reply	other threads:[~2020-02-05  4:01 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 5+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2020-01-22  4:27 Kernel drivers and IOCTLs WyoFlippa
2020-01-22 19:04 ` Greg KH
2020-01-23 16:49 ` Valdis Klētnieks
2020-02-05  2:57   ` WyoFlippa
2020-02-05  4:01     ` Valdis Klētnieks [this message]

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