Re: BPF LSM and fexit [was: [PATCH bpf-next v3 04/10] bpf: lsm: Add mutable hooks list for the BPF LSM]

[Casey Schaufler]

On 2/12/2020 8:26 AM, KP Singh wrote:
> On 12-Feb 07:52, Casey Schaufler wrote:
>> On 2/11/2020 6:45 PM, Alexei Starovoitov wrote:
>>> On Wed, Feb 12, 2020 at 01:09:07AM +0100, Daniel Borkmann wrote:
>>>> Another approach could be to have a special nop inside call_int_hook()
>>>> macro which would then get patched to avoid these situations. Somewhat
>>>> similar like static keys where it could be defined anywhere in text but
>>>> with updating of call_int_hook()'s RC for the verdict.
>> Tell me again why you can't register your BPF hooks like all the
>> other security modules do? You keep reintroducing BPF as a special
>> case, and I don't see why.
> I think we tried to answer this in the discussion we had:
>
>  https://lore.kernel.org/bpf/20200123152440.28956-1-kpsingh@xxxxxxxxxxxx/T/#meb1eea982e63be0806f9bba58e91160871803752

I understand your arguments, but remain unconvinced.

> BPF should not allocate a wrapper (to be statically regsitered at
> init) for each LSM hook and run the programs from within that as this
> implies adding overhead across the board for every hook even if
> it's never used (i.e. no BPF program is attached to the hook).

SELinux would run faster if it didn't have hooks installed where
there is no policy loaded that would ever fail for them. That's
not the infrastructure's problem.

> We can, with the suggestions discussed here, avoid adding unncessary
> overhead for unused hooks. And, as Alexei mentioned, adding overhead
> when not really needed is especially bad for LSM hooks like
> sock_sendmsg.

You're adding overhead for systems that have BPF built, but not used.

> The other LSMs do not provide dynamic / mutable hooks, so it makes
> sense for them to register the hooks once at load time.

As mentioned above, the hooks may not be mutable, but policy
may make them pointless. That is the security module's problem,
not the infrastructure's.

>
> - KP
>
>>> Sounds nice in theory. I couldn't quite picture how that would look
>>> in the code, so I hacked:
>>> diff --git a/security/security.c b/security/security.c
>>> index 565bc9b67276..ce4bc1e5e26c 100644
>>> --- a/security/security.c
> [...]