Re: [PATCH v8 0/8] Fork brute force attack mitigation

On Sat, Jun 05, 2021 at 05:03:57PM +0200, John Wood wrote:

[...]
the kselftest to avoid the detection ;) ). So, in this version, to track
all the statistical data (info related with application crashes), the
extended attributes feature for the executable files are used. The xattr is
also used to mark the executables as "not allowed" when an attack is
detected. Then, the execve system call rely on this flag to avoid following
executions of this file.

I have some concerns about this being actually usable and not creating
DoS situations. For example, let's say an attacker had found a hard-to-hit
bug in "sudo", and starts brute forcing it. When the brute LSM notices,
it'll make "sudo" unusable for the entire system, yes?

And a reboot won't fix it, either, IIUC.

It seems like there is a need to track "user" running "prog", and have
that be timed out. Are there use-cases here where that wouldn't be
sufficient?

-Kees

-- 
Kees Cook