Re: [PATCH v6 08/10] parisc/perf: open access for CAP_PERFMON privileged process

[James Morris]

On Tue, 28 Jan 2020, Alexey Budankov wrote:

> 
> Open access to monitoring for CAP_PERFMON privileged process.
> Providing the access under CAP_PERFMON capability singly, without the
> rest of CAP_SYS_ADMIN credentials, excludes chances to misuse the
> credentials and makes operation more secure.
> 
> 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)
> 
> For backward compatibility reasons access to the monitoring remains open
> for CAP_SYS_ADMIN privileged processes but CAP_SYS_ADMIN usage for secure
> monitoring is discouraged with respect to CAP_PERFMON capability.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Alexey Budankov <alexey.budankov@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
>  arch/parisc/kernel/perf.c | 2 +-
>  1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
> 
> diff --git a/arch/parisc/kernel/perf.c b/arch/parisc/kernel/perf.c
> index 676683641d00..c4208d027794 100644
> --- a/arch/parisc/kernel/perf.c
> +++ b/arch/parisc/kernel/perf.c
> @@ -300,7 +300,7 @@ static ssize_t perf_write(struct file *file, const char __user *buf,
>  	else
>  		return -EFAULT;
>  
> -	if (!capable(CAP_SYS_ADMIN))
> +	if (!perfmon_capable())
>  		return -EACCES;
>  
>  	if (count != sizeof(uint32_t))
> 


Acked-by: James Morris <jamorris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

-- 
James Morris
<jmorris@xxxxxxxxx>