Re: [dm-devel] [RFC PATCH v5 00/11] Integrity Policy Enforcement LSM (IPE)

[Mimi Zohar]

On Sat, 2020-08-08 at 13:47 -0400, Chuck Lever wrote:
> > On Aug 5, 2020, at 2:15 PM, Mimi Zohar <zohar@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

<snip>

> > If block layer integrity was enough, there wouldn't have been a need
> > for fs-verity.   Even fs-verity is limited to read only filesystems,
> > which makes validating file integrity so much easier.  From the
> > beginning, we've said that fs-verity signatures should be included in
> > the measurement list.  (I thought someone signed on to add that support
> > to IMA, but have not yet seen anything.)
> 
> Mimi, when you and I discussed this during LSS NA 2019, I didn't fully
> understand that you expected me to implement signed Merkle trees for all
> filesystems. At the time, it sounded to me like you wanted signed Merkle
> trees only for NFS files. Is that still the case?

I definitely do not expect you to support signed Merkle trees for all
filesystems.  My interested is from an IMA perspective of measuring and
verifying the fs-verity Merkle tree root (and header info) signature. 
This is independent of which filesystems support it.

> 
> The first priority (for me, anyway) therefore is getting the ability to
> move IMA metadata between NFS clients and servers shoveled into the NFS
> protocol, but that's been blocked for various legal reasons.

Up to now, verifying remote filesystem file integrity has been out of
scope for IMA.   With fs-verity file signatures I can at least grasp
how remote file integrity could possibly work.  I don't understand how
remote file integrity with existing IMA formats could be supported. You
might want to consider writing a whitepaper, which could later be used
as the basis for a patch set cover letter.

Mimi

> 
> IMO we need agreement from everyone (integrity developers, FS
> implementers, and Linux distributors) that a signed Merkle tree IMA
> metadata format, stored in either an xattr or appended to an executable
> file, will be the way forward for IMA in all filesystems.