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SubjectRe: Direct access to hardware
In <20000722013433.N800@niksula.cs.hut.fi> Ville Herva (vherva@mail.niksula.cs.hut.fi) wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 21, 2000 at 11:02:58PM +0400, you [Khimenko Victor] claimed:
>> In <Pine.LNX.4.21.0007212009040.5384-100000@tricky> Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz (dake@staszic.waw.pl) wrote:
>>
>> > BTW: software may (but don't have to) damage BIOSes, firmwares, CPUs
>> > (programming PLL on mobo), older monitors, ISA/PCI cards (programming
>> > southbridge to get ISA/11Mhz and PCI/41.5Mhz)... etc...
>> > just imagine advanced worm (similar to the one discribed in some
>> > lcamtuf's project) making use of all hardware "features"... ugh...
>>
>> > The ONE and ONLY solution is r00t without direct access to hardware...
>>
>> Yeah. Hmm. Looks like I can userstood now: if direct access to hardware
>> (and to /dev/kmem, of course) is disabled (some router or firewall so
>> capabilities are removed from system) but you STILL need HDIO_DRIVE_CMD
>> then yes, in this RARE scenario this patch is usefull. Huh. Someone knows
>> at least ONE system in such configuration and with such need ?

> So, would it be feasible to make it possible to disable direct hardware
> access (/dev/mem, /dev/nvram, HD ioctls, what else?) completely in kernel
> config?

Grrr. It's doable from userspace. Just echo appropriate number in
/proc/sys/kernel/cap-bound in /sbin/init (or early in rc.S) and that's all.

> Or are some of those always needed? If not, then they could be
> disabled (do not enable what you don't need, as with /etc/inetd) on a
> trivial web server box, route, firewall etc.

You CAN disable it all with one small keystroke.

> Of course, kernel module loading should be disabled as well (or made
> available only via challange-response authentication or something (*)).

You can load all needed modules and then disable modules loading with the
same /proc/sys/kernel/cap-bound ...

> Make your boot media read-only, and the cracker shouldn't be able to
> change the kernel either.

> Which applications need (dangerous) direct hardware access?

XFree86

> In which cases would it be possible to disable it?

When you do not need GUI :-)

> You can't propably shield your monitor if you want to run X, but for server
> boxes, that's not a big deal.

Exacttly. And for such protection you DO NOT NEED Andre's patch. You need
MUCH smaller and clearer Vojtech's patch (just two lines instead of 60K).

> If nothing else, people running honey pot boxes to attract crackers would
> propably want to use this.

> Or is this a completely dead idea?

It's not dead idea. Even more: such protection ALREADY is offered by kernel.

> (*) Publib key in kernel, private key held separately by the
> administrator. Without writable /dev/mem (etc) this should work?

No, this is not implemented (yet?). You can load all needed modules early in
boot process and then disable everything non-needed (including ability to
load modules).




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