From: Stephen Smalley <sds@tycho.nsa.gov>
To: Alexey Budankov <alexey.budankov@linux.intel.com>,
James Morris <jmorris@namei.org>, Serge Hallyn <serge@hallyn.com>,
Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>,
Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@kernel.org>,
Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>,
"joonas.lahtinen@linux.intel.com"
<joonas.lahtinen@linux.intel.com>,
Alexei Starovoitov <ast@kernel.org>,
Will Deacon <will@kernel.org>, Paul Mackerras <paulus@samba.org>,
Michael Ellerman <mpe@ellerman.id.au>
Cc: Andi Kleen <ak@linux.intel.com>,
Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>,
Stephane Eranian <eranian@google.com>,
Igor Lubashev <ilubashe@akamai.com>, Jiri Olsa <jolsa@redhat.com>,
linux-kernel <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
"intel-gfx@lists.freedesktop.org"
<intel-gfx@lists.freedesktop.org>,
"linux-security-module@vger.kernel.org"
<linux-security-module@vger.kernel.org>,
"selinux@vger.kernel.org" <selinux@vger.kernel.org>,
linux-arm-kernel <linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org>,
"linuxppc-dev@lists.ozlabs.org" <linuxppc-dev@lists.ozlabs.org>,
"linux-parisc@vger.kernel.org" <linux-parisc@vger.kernel.org>,
oprofile-list@lists.sf.net
Subject: Re: [PATCH v6 01/10] capabilities: introduce CAP_PERFMON to kernel and user space
Date: Thu, 6 Feb 2020 13:30:56 -0500 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <06cdca0e-65f2-b58d-a84e-5a1907aa9eb5@tycho.nsa.gov> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <1bcb4cb1-98c4-cc1a-b8e3-fd8a0e1e606f@linux.intel.com>
On 2/6/20 1:26 PM, Alexey Budankov wrote:
>
> On 06.02.2020 21:23, Stephen Smalley wrote:
>> On 2/5/20 12:30 PM, Alexey Budankov wrote:
>>>
>>> Introduce CAP_PERFMON capability designed to secure system performance
>>> monitoring and observability operations so that CAP_PERFMON would assist
>>> CAP_SYS_ADMIN capability in its governing role for performance monitoring
>>> and observability subsystems.
>>>
>>> CAP_PERFMON hardens system security and integrity during performance
>>> monitoring and observability operations by decreasing attack surface that
>>> is available to a CAP_SYS_ADMIN privileged process [2]. Providing the access
>>> to system performance monitoring and observability operations under CAP_PERFMON
>>> capability singly, without the rest of CAP_SYS_ADMIN credentials, excludes
>>> chances to misuse the credentials and makes the operation more secure.
>>> Thus, CAP_PERFMON implements the principal of least privilege for performance
>>> monitoring and observability operations (POSIX IEEE 1003.1e: 2.2.2.39 principle
>>> of least privilege: A security design principle that states that a process
>>> or program be granted only those privileges (e.g., capabilities) necessary
>>> to accomplish its legitimate function, and only for the time that such
>>> privileges are actually required)
>>>
>>> CAP_PERFMON meets the demand to secure system performance monitoring and
>>> observability operations for adoption in security sensitive, restricted,
>>> multiuser production environments (e.g. HPC clusters, cloud and virtual compute
>>> environments), where root or CAP_SYS_ADMIN credentials are not available to
>>> mass users of a system, and securely unblocks accessibility of system performance monitoring and observability operations beyond root and CAP_SYS_ADMIN use cases.
>>>
>>> CAP_PERFMON takes over CAP_SYS_ADMIN credentials related to system performance
>>> monitoring and observability operations and balances amount of CAP_SYS_ADMIN
>>> credentials following the recommendations in the capabilities man page [1]
>>> for CAP_SYS_ADMIN: "Note: this capability is overloaded; see Notes to kernel
>>> developers, below." For backward compatibility reasons access to system
>>> performance monitoring and observability subsystems of the kernel remains
>>> open for CAP_SYS_ADMIN privileged processes but CAP_SYS_ADMIN capability
>>> usage for secure system performance monitoring and observability operations
>>> is discouraged with respect to the designed CAP_PERFMON capability.
>>>
>>> Although the software running under CAP_PERFMON can not ensure avoidance
>>> of related hardware issues, the software can still mitigate these issues
>>> following the official hardware issues mitigation procedure [2]. The bugs
>>> in the software itself can be fixed following the standard kernel development
>>> process [3] to maintain and harden security of system performance monitoring
>>> and observability operations.
>>>
>>> [1] http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/capabilities.7.html
>>> [2] https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/embargoed-hardware-issues.html
>>> [3] https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-guide/security-bugs.html
>>>
>>> Signed-off-by: Alexey Budankov <alexey.budankov@linux.intel.com>
>>
>> This will require a small update to the selinux-testsuite to correctly reflect the new capability requirements, but that's easy enough.
>
> Is the suite a part of the kernel sources or something else?
It is external,
https://github.com/SELinuxProject/selinux-testsuite
I wasn't suggesting that your patch be blocked on updating the
testsuite, just noting that it will need to be done.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2020-02-06 18:30 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 17+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2020-02-05 17:25 [PATCH v6 00/10] Introduce CAP_PERFMON to secure system performance monitoring and observability Alexey Budankov
2020-02-05 17:30 ` [PATCH v6 01/10] capabilities: introduce CAP_PERFMON to kernel and user space Alexey Budankov
2020-02-06 18:23 ` Stephen Smalley
2020-02-06 18:26 ` Alexey Budankov
2020-02-06 18:30 ` Stephen Smalley [this message]
2020-02-06 18:38 ` Alexey Budankov
2020-02-05 17:30 ` [PATCH v6 02/10] perf/core: open access to the core for CAP_PERFMON privileged process Alexey Budankov
2020-02-05 17:31 ` [PATCH v6 03/10] perf/core: open access to probes " Alexey Budankov
2020-02-05 17:32 ` [PATCH v6 04/10] perf tool: extend Perf tool with CAP_PERFMON capability support Alexey Budankov
2020-02-05 17:33 ` [PATCH v6 05/10] drm/i915/perf: open access for CAP_PERFMON privileged process Alexey Budankov
2020-02-05 17:34 ` [PATCH v6 06/10] trace/bpf_trace: " Alexey Budankov
2020-02-05 17:35 ` [PATCH v6 07/10] powerpc/perf: " Alexey Budankov
2020-02-05 17:35 ` [PATCH v6 08/10] parisc/perf: " Alexey Budankov
2020-02-05 17:36 ` [PATCH v6 09/10] drivers/perf: " Alexey Budankov
2020-02-05 17:37 ` [PATCH v6 10/10] drivers/oprofile: " Alexey Budankov
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2020-01-28 5:52 [PATCH v6 00/10] Introduce CAP_PERFMON to secure system performance monitoring and observability Alexey Budankov
2020-01-28 6:07 ` [PATCH v6 01/10] capabilities: introduce CAP_PERFMON to kernel and user space Alexey Budankov
2020-01-28 21:16 ` James Morris
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