From: Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
To: Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@kernel.org>
Cc: "Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@xmission.com>,
Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org>,
viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk, rafael@kernel.org, jeyu@kernel.org,
jmorris@namei.org, keescook@chromium.org, paul@paul-moore.com,
stephen.smalley.work@gmail.com, eparis@parisplace.org,
nayna@linux.ibm.com, zohar@linux.ibm.com,
scott.branden@broadcom.com, dan.carpenter@oracle.com,
skhan@linuxfoundation.org, geert@linux-m68k.org,
tglx@linutronix.de, bauerman@linux.ibm.com, dhowells@redhat.com,
linux-integrity@vger.kernel.org, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org,
kexec@lists.infradead.org, linux-security-module@vger.kernel.org,
selinux@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/3] security: add symbol namespace for reading file data
Date: Wed, 13 May 2020 18:26:04 +0200 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20200513162604.GE1362525@kroah.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20200513161622.GS11244@42.do-not-panic.com>
On Wed, May 13, 2020 at 04:16:22PM +0000, Luis Chamberlain wrote:
> On Wed, May 13, 2020 at 10:40:31AM -0500, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
> > Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@kernel.org> writes:
> >
> > > Certain symbols are not meant to be used by everybody, the security
> > > helpers for reading files directly is one such case. Use a symbol
> > > namespace for them.
> > >
> > > This will prevent abuse of use of these symbols in places they were
> > > not inteded to be used, and provides an easy way to audit where these
> > > types of operations happen as a whole.
> >
> > Why not just remove the ability for the firmware loader to be a module?
> >
> > Is there some important use case that requires the firmware loader
> > to be a module?
> >
> > We already compile the code in by default. So it is probably just
> > easier to remove the modular support all together. Which would allow
> > the export of the security hooks to be removed as well.
>
> Yeah, that's a better solution. The only constaint I am aware of is
> we *cannot* change the name of the module from firmware_class since the
> old fallback sysfs loader depends on the module name. So, so long as we
> take care with that on built-in and document this very well, I think
> we should be good.
>
> I checked the commit logs and this was tristate since the code was added
> upstream, so I cannot see any good reason it was enabled as modular.
>
> Speaking with a *backports experience* hat on, we did have a use case
> to use a module for it in case a new feature was added upstream which
> was not present on older kernels. However I think that using a separate
> symbol prefix would help with that.
>
> Would any Android stakeholders / small / embedded folks whave any issue
> with this?
Android has build in the firmware loading logic for a while now. Well,
always, they have not had kernel modules for many years. That is
changing but this logic is not getting moved to a kernel module as that
would just be silly :)
thanks,
greg k-h
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2020-05-13 16:26 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 22+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2020-05-13 15:21 [PATCH 0/3] fs: reduce export usage of kerne_read*() calls Luis Chamberlain
2020-05-13 15:21 ` [PATCH 1/3] fs: unexport kernel_read_file() Luis Chamberlain
2020-05-13 15:21 ` [PATCH 2/3] security: add symbol namespace for reading file data Luis Chamberlain
2020-05-13 15:40 ` Eric W. Biederman
2020-05-13 16:09 ` Greg KH
2020-05-13 16:16 ` Luis Chamberlain
2020-05-13 16:26 ` Greg KH [this message]
2020-05-13 18:07 ` Josh Triplett
2020-05-13 15:21 ` [PATCH 3/3] fs: move kernel_read*() calls to its own symbol namespace Luis Chamberlain
2020-05-13 16:08 ` Greg KH
2020-05-13 18:17 ` [PATCH 0/3] fs: reduce export usage of kerne_read*() calls Christoph Hellwig
2020-05-15 21:29 ` Luis Chamberlain
2020-05-18 6:22 ` Christoph Hellwig
2020-05-18 12:37 ` Mimi Zohar
2020-05-18 15:21 ` Kees Cook
2020-07-29 1:20 ` Luis Chamberlain
2020-05-22 22:24 ` Scott Branden
2020-05-22 23:04 ` Kees Cook
2020-05-22 23:25 ` Scott Branden
2020-05-24 2:52 ` Mimi Zohar
2020-06-05 18:15 ` Scott Branden
2020-06-05 18:37 ` Mimi Zohar
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