Re: [PATCH 1/4] module: add syscall to load module from fd

[Kees Cook]

On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 3:14 PM, Kees Cook <keescook@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> As part of the effort to create a stronger boundary between root and
> kernel, Chrome OS wants to be able to enforce that kernel modules are
> being loaded only from our read-only crypto-hash verified (dm_verity)
> root filesystem. Since the init_module syscall hands the kernel a module
> as a memory blob, no reasoning about the origin of the blob can be made.
>
> Earlier proposals for appending signatures to kernel modules would not be
> useful in Chrome OS, since it would involve adding an additional set of
> keys to our kernel and builds for no good reason: we already trust the
> contents of our root filesystem. We don't need to verify those kernel
> modules a second time. Having to do signature checking on module loading
> would slow us down and be redundant. All we need to know is where a
> module is coming from so we can say yes/no to loading it.
>
> If a file descriptor is used as the source of a kernel module, many more
> things can be reasoned about. In Chrome OS's case, we could enforce that
> the module lives on the filesystem we expect it to live on.  In the case
> of IMA (or other LSMs), it would be possible, for example, to examine
> extended attributes that may contain signatures over the contents of
> the module.
>
> This introduces a new syscall (on x86), similar to init_module, that has
> only two arguments. The first argument is used as a file descriptor to
> the module and the second argument is a pointer to the NULL terminated
> string of module arguments.

Hi Rusty,

Is this likely to land in the 3.7 change window? I'd really like to
get the syscall number assigned so I can start sending patches to
glibc, kmod, etc. My tree is here, FWIW:

http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/kees/linux.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/module-fd-syscall

Thanks!

-Kees

-- 
Kees Cook
Chrome OS Security
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