Re: [PATCH v9 5/8] IMA: limit critical data measurement based on a label

[Tushar Sugandhi]

On 2020-12-24 6:29 a.m., Mimi Zohar wrote:
> Hi Tushar,
>
> On Sat, 2020-12-12 at 10:02 -0800, Tushar Sugandhi wrote:
> > System administrators should be able to limit which kernel subsystems
> > they want to measure the critical data for. To enable that, an IMA policy
> > condition to choose specific kernel subsystems is needed. This policy
> > condition would constrain the measurement of the critical data based on
> > a label for the given subsystems.
>
> Restricting which kernel integrity critical data is measured is not
> only of interest to system administrators.   Why single them out?
system administrators are usually responsible for system 
policies/configurations.They own modifications in the config files like
ima-policy. That's why we wanted to address them to begin with. But you
are correct. This is not only of interest to sysadmins. I will make the 
description more generic.


> Limiting which critical data is measured is based on a label, making it
> flexible.  In your use case scenario, you're grouping the label based
> on kernel subsystem, but is that really necessary?  In the broader
> picture, there could be cross subsystem critical data being measured
> based on a single label.
>
> Please think about the broader picture and re-write the patch
> descirption more generically.
Makes sense. Will make the patch description more generic.
> > Add a new IMA policy condition - "data_source:=" to the IMA func
>
> What is with "add"?  You're "adding support for" or "defining" a new
> policy condition.  Remove the single hyphen, as explained in 3/8.
>
> Please replace "data_source" with something more generic (e.g. label).
Sounds good. Would you prefer "label" or something else like "data_label"?

In the policy file the "label" looks logical and more generic than 
"data_label".
   measure func=CRITICAL_DATA label=selinux

For the time being, I will stick with "label", please let me know if you
prefer something else.

Thanks,
Tushar

> thanks,
>
> Mimi
>
> > CRITICAL_DATA to allow measurement of various kernel subsystems. This
> > policy condition would enable the system administrators to restrict the
> > measurement to the labels listed in "data_source:=".
> >
> > Limit the measurement to the labels that are specified in the IMA
> > policy - CRITICAL_DATA+"data_source:=". If "data_sources:=" is not
> > provided with the func CRITICAL_DATA, the data from all the
> > supported kernel subsystems is measured.
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Tushar Sugandhi <tusharsu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>