Re: [PATCH v3 2/2] ima: add enforce-evm and log-evm modes to strictly check EVM status

[Mimi Zohar]

Hi Roberto,

Thank you for updating the patch description.

On Thu, 2019-06-06 at 13:26 +0200, Roberto Sassu wrote:
> IMA and EVM have been designed as two independent subsystems: the first for
> checking the integrity of file data; the second for checking file metadata.
> Making them independent allows users to adopt them incrementally.
> 
> The point of intersection is in IMA-Appraisal, which calls
> evm_verifyxattr() to ensure that security.ima wasn't modified during an
> offline attack. The design choice, to ensure incremental adoption, was to
> continue appraisal verification if evm_verifyxattr() returns
> INTEGRITY_UNKNOWN. This value is returned when EVM is not enabled in the
> kernel configuration, or if the HMAC key has not been loaded yet.
> 
> Although this choice appears legitimate, it might not be suitable for
> hardened systems, where the administrator expects that access is denied if
> there is any error. An attacker could intentionally delete the EVM keys
> from the system and set the file digest in security.ima to the actual file
> digest so that the final appraisal status is INTEGRITY_PASS.

Assuming that the EVM HMAC key is stored in the initramfs, not on some
other file system, and the initramfs is signed, INTEGRITY_UNKNOWN
would be limited to the rootfs filesystem.

> 
> This patch allows such hardened systems to strictly enforce an access
> control policy based on the validity of signatures/HMACs, by introducing
> two new values for the ima_appraise= kernel option: enforce-evm and
> log-evm.
> 

This patch defines a global policy requiring EVM on all filesystems.
I've previously suggested extending the IMA policy to support
enforcing or maybe exempting EVM on a per IMA policy rule basis. ÂAs
seen by the need for an additional patch, included in this patch set,
which defines a temporary random number HMAC key to address
INTEGRITY_UNKNOWN on the rootfs filesystem, exempting certain
filesystems on a per policy rule basis might be simpler and achieve
similar results.

I'd like to hear other people's thoughts on defining a temporary,
random number HMAC key.

thanks,

Mimi