[Ksummit-discuss] [TECH TOPIC] Kernel Hardening
James Morris
jmorris at namei.org
Mon Aug 24 04:20:01 UTC 2015
I'd like to propose a security topic, "Kernel Hardening" (or "Kernel Self
Protection"), to discuss how we can better mitigate vulnerabilities
arising from kernel bugs.
We have some measures in place, although we are really not doing
everything we can, as demonstrated from time to time when vulnerabilities
arise which are mitigated by protections in grsecurity (for example), but
not by mainline. Much of the necessary work has already been done in that
project, and as many will know, there have been significant challenges
involved in past efforts to bring these techniques into mainline. In some
cases, the performance hit has been too high for maintainers to accept,
and I wonder if we can re-visit some of these cases, with new approaches
or perspectives on cost/benefit.
There are also potentially promising approaches to mitigation with other
technologies such as KASan and gcc plugins, as well as evolving hardware
features.
The aim of this session would be to bring relevant core kernel maintainers
together with representatives of the research community and figure out a
way to work together to improve hardening and mitigation in the Linux
kernel. We'd discuss what gaps we currently have, and what code or
techniques already exist that can be incorporated into mainline to close
them. We'd identify issues that maintainers may have and try and find
ways to address those issues. From this, I'd hope that we'd develop an
overall picture of what needs to be done and a practical idea of how to
move forward. We may not necessarily resolve all issues in this session,
but we can at least characterize them and go away and think more about
them.
We could also talk to the Core Infrastructure Initiative folk if we
discover potentially useful tasks with no owners -- they may be able to
fund developers for them. It would likely be useful to provide CII with a
status report after the session in any case.
I'd recommend Kees Cook be involved, due to his existing efforts in kernel
hardening. I think it would be good to invite one or two expert security
researchers in this area -- Kees would know who. In terms of core kernel
folk, I'd suggest Ingo and akpm, as a starting point.
Comments?
--
James Morris
<jmorris at namei.org>
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