Re: [PATCH v2 00/15] ima: digest list feature

On Tue, Nov 7, 2017 at 12:53 PM, Roberto Sassu [off-list ref] wrote:

On 11/7/2017 3:49 PM, Matthew Garrett wrote:

quoted

RPM's hardly universal, and distributions are in the process of moving
away from using it for distributing non-core applications (Flatpak and
Snap are becoming increasingly popular here). I think this needs to be
a generic solution rather than having the kernel tied to a specific
package format.

Support for new digest list formats can be easily added. Digest list
metadata includes the digest list type, so that the appropriate parser
is selected.

But we're still left in a state where the kernel has to end up
supporting a number of very niche formats, and userland agility is
tied to the kernel. I think it makes significantly more sense to push
the problem out to userland.

Digest lists should be parsed directly by the kernel, because processing
the lists in userspace would increase the chances that a compromised
tool does not upload to the kernel the expected digests. Also, digest
lists must be processed before init, otherwise appraisal will deny the
execution. Lastly, the mechanism of parsing files from the kernel is
already used to parse the IMA policy.

Isn't failing to upload the expected digest list just a DoS? We
already expect to load keys from initramfs, so it seems fine to parse
stuff there - what's the problem with extracting information from
RPMs, translating them to the generic format and pushing that into the
kernel?