Re: [PATCH v4 2/14] Add TSEM specific documentation.

On Tue, Jan 21, 2025 at 10:09:59AM -0800, Casey Schaufler wrote:

Hi Casey, I hope your weekend has gone well, greetings to other on the
list as well.

On 1/18/2025 11:03 AM, Dr. Greg wrote:

quoted

On Fri, Jan 17, 2025 at 10:10:30AM -0800, Casey Schaufler wrote:

Good morning Casey, I hope your weekend is going well, thanks for
taking the time to forward along your thoughts on our work.

quoted

On 1/16/2025 8:47 PM, Dr. Greg wrote:

quoted

On Mon, Jan 13, 2025 at 08:29:47PM -0500, Paul Moore wrote:

...

quoted

quoted

Please define the CELL acronym here as I believe it is the first use of
"CELL" in this document.

FWIW, CELL isn't an acronym, it is a metaphor.

TSEM was conceptually inspired by and derived from the Turing Abstract
Machine Model (TAMM), as applied to the problem of modeling the
security state of an execution domain.

As everyone reading this knows, a TAMM, in practice, consists of a
head traversing an infinite paper tape divided into cells that direct
the next state of the machine.

In TSEM, the model consists of a Context Of Execution (COE) with
security definining characteristics, traversing a finite set of
measurement points of infinite length, with defining characteristics
at each point.

We refer to a measurement point and its characteristics as a CELL in
deference to the inspiration for all of this.

We will add this explanation to the documentation.

Communication within a community as culturally diverse as the Linux
kernel developers* requires that you do not assume that "everyone reading
this" knows much of anything beyond how to type "make". Let's face it,
there are kernel developers today who would look at the Turing test and
say "is that even a thing?" There are others who don't have an education
that includes mid-twentieth century technological history.

[* Yes, an awful lot of Linux kernel developers are western males. ] 

...

Sigh....

It would thus appear that effective dialogue in the Linux kernel
community is now about as perilous as attempting to square dance in a
minefield with snowshoes on.

This isn't about Political Correctness. It's about communication.
Your documentation appears to target PHD level computer scientists.

Probably not surprising, given that Quixote has been architected and
stewarded by three Ph.D.'s, one soon to be Ph.D. and a rather
remarkable individual that has four Ph.D.'s worth of experience, if I
can choose my phrasing carefully, in global cyber-operations of
various types.

Most Linux kernel developers are much more the BS engineer sort.
I'm not saying you need to dumb it down, I'm suggesting that you
could make it easier to review by targeting your audience better.

In the theory portion of the documentation we attempted to draw
correlations between classic mandatory access control and integrity
architectures and what we are implementing with Quixote/TSEM.

quoted

When we penned the reflections above, we very specifically didot
want to be so pejorative as to suggest that anyone involved in this
endeavor wouldn't have at least a basic understanding of the
computability theory that all of our work is based.  They even have a
movie about it, presumably in multiple languages.

In any event, we apologize for being mistaken.

We will add a Wikipedia link in the documentation pointing to an
article on Turing machines, for the benefit of the unwashed masses now
involved in kernel development.

The link is a good idea.

Clarifications to the theory section and a Wikipedia link have been
added and will appear in V5.

quoted

quoted

quoted

We believe there is a technical solution to this problem as well but
our work on that front, at this point, is too technically immature to
go into.

quoted

quoted

Didn't Pierre de Fermat say something like that about some theorem
or another?

quoted

As a Quixote team we take some solace to your reference of Fermat's
Theorem with respect to our work.  It took 358 years to formally prove
his theorem, in the face of many nay-sayers.  It turns out he was
absolutely right and his vision is now universally accepted as a
foundational premise of mathematics.

If it takes the Quixote team 358 years to develop a technical
solution I expect you will miss your market window. :(

If we didn't believe that we have a solid technical solution in hand
within the context of this century, and groups that have asked for it
to be in the kernel, we wouldn't be expending cycles on getting it
upstreamed.

We are hoping for considerably better than 358 years, but that would
seem to be dependent on Linux review bandwidth, which everyone agrees
is strained.

More to the point, we were making an allusion with our comments that
throughout history, disruptive innovation has been consistently missed
by the technical status quo.

Once again, thank you for your comments and review.

Have a good remainder of the weekend.

As always,
Dr. Greg

The Quixote Project - Flailing at the Travails of Cybersecurity
              https://github.com/Quixote-Project