Re: [PATCH] extend IMA boot_aggregate with kernel measurements

[Mimi Zohar]

On Tue, 2020-06-16 at 17:29 +0000, Roberto Sassu wrote:
> > From: James Bottomley [mailto:jejb@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> > Sent: Friday, June 12, 2020 7:14 PM
> > On Fri, 2020-06-12 at 15:11 +0000, Roberto Sassu wrote:
> > > with recent patches, boot_aggregate can be calculated from non-SHA1
> > > PCR banks. I would replace with:
> > >
> > > Extend cumulative digest over ...
> > >
> > > Given that with this patch boot_aggregate is calculated differently,
> > > shouldn't we call it boot_aggregate_v2 and enable it with a new
> > > option?
> > 
> > So here's the problem: if your current grub doesn't do any TPM
> > extensions (as most don't), then the two boot aggregates are the same
> > because PCRs 8 and 9 are zero and there's a test that doesn't add them
> > to the aggregate if they are zero.  For these people its a nop so we
> > shouldn't force them to choose a different version of the same thing.
> > 
> > If, however, you're on a distribution where grub is automatically
> > measuring the kernel and command line into PCRs 8 and 9 (I think Fedora
> > 32 does this), your boot aggregate will change.  It strikes me in that
> > case we can call this a bug fix, since the boot aggregate isn't
> > properly binding to the previous measurements without PCRs 8 and 9.  In
> > this case, do we want to allow people to select an option which doesn't
> > properly bind the IMA log to the boot measurements?  That sounds like a
> > security hole to me.
> > 
> > However, since it causes a user visible difference in the grub already
> > measures case, do you have a current use case that would be affected?
> > As in are lots of people already running a distro with the TPM grub
> > updates and relying on the old boot aggregate?
> 
> I don't know how many people would be affected. However, if an
> attestation tool processes both measurement lists from unpatched kernels
> and patched kernels, keeping the same name would be a problem as it
> cannot be determined from the measurement list how boot_aggregate
> was calculated.
> 
> Anyway, I agree this should be fixed. At least, I suggest to add a Fixes tag,
> to ensure that this patch is applied to all stable kernels.

The boot aggregate on existing systems would be sha1. ÂDoes it make
sense to limit this change to larger digests? ÂAnyone backporting
support for larger digests would also need to backport this change as
well.

Mimi