[Devel] Re: [PATCH 1/1] cr: fix compilation with CONFIG_UTS_NS=n

[Serge E. Hallyn]

Quoting Nathan Lynch (ntl at pobox.com):
> "Serge E. Hallyn" <serue at us.ibm.com> writes:
> 
> > Quoting Nathan Lynch (ntl at pobox.com):
> >> "Serge E. Hallyn" <serue at us.ibm.com> writes:
> >> > Quoting Nathan Lynch (ntl at pobox.com):
> >> >> Oren Laadan <orenl at cs.columbia.edu> writes:
> >> >> 
> >> >> > I think it's useful to be able to
> >> >> >
> >> >> > 1) checkpoint on a system with !CONFIG_UTS_NS,  and -
> >> >> > 2) checkpoint on a system with CONFIG_UTS_NS and restart on a
> >> >> > system with !CONFIG_UTS_NS (as long as all tasks in the image
> >> >> > share a single uts-ns)
> >> >> 
> >> >> In principle I agree, but what confidence can we have that meaningful
> >> >> testing of such configurations (especially #2) will occur?
> >> >
> >> > History says, low confidence.  So far just 1 is bad enough.  It's
> >> > taking a lot of my time on the LSM c/r (with the various combinations
> >> > of CONFIG_SECURITY, CONFIG_IPC_NS, and CONFIG_CHECKPOINT), and things
> >> > like CONFIG_IPC_NS consistently break c/r anyway.
> >> >
> >> > So for 2 i'm tempted to say let's encode a sha1sum of the .config
> >> > into the checkpoint header.  We'll keep *trying* to support (2), and
> >> > userspace can trivially rewrite the header if it really wants to believe
> >> > we've succeeded.
> >> 
> >> Are you suggesting having sys_restart code path consult the .config
> >> sha1sum in the image?
> >
> > Yup.
> >
> >> Or is it just for the benefit of userspace?  If
> >> the former, I'm having difficulty grasping the benefit.
> >
> > Well we could also do it in userspace, but it seemed easier to actually
> > store the sha1sum in a char buf in the c/r code in the kernel, stick it
> > in the header at checkpoint, and verify it at restart.
> >
> > The benefit?  Well...  really I feel opposite today.  Along the lines
> > of supporting unprivileged restart as long as possible to make us
> > consider security, I guess I'd argue we should support heterogenous
> > (in terms of config :) c/r as long as possible.  The reason I was
> > thinking otherwise yesterday is that I have to special-case things
> > like the task->security objref when CONFIG_SECURITY=n.  It felt
> > hacky yesterday, but the end result looks pretty good and is i 
> > think better thought out than it would have been were we doing the
> > sha1sum thing.
> 
> Okay.  My thought was that the sha1sum would be as subject to tampering
> as anything else in the image, so the restart path couldn't really rely
> on it to convey accurate information about the image contents.  But I
> suppose it's moot now.

whoa, I was in no way suggesting this as a way to stop userspace from
loading such an image.  As I said in an earlier email, it would be
trivial - and be a feature - for userspace to rewrite the ckpt image
with the new kernels' sha1sum(config).

So the sha1sum would be to protect userspace from itself.  To actually
prevent userspace from loading such a ckpt image at all, we would need
to ask the TPM to sign the ckpt image with a private key stored only on
the TPM.

-serge
_______________________________________________
Containers mailing list
Containers at lists.linux-foundation.org
https://lists.linux-foundation.org/mailman/listinfo/containers