Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 15 Feb 2007 12:01:22 -0800 (PST) | From | David Lang <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH 0/6] MODSIGN: Kernel module signing |
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On Thu, 15 Feb 2007, Roman Zippel wrote:
> On Thu, 15 Feb 2007, David Howells wrote: > >> It is possible to protect /dev/mem and /dev/kmem or make them unavailable and >> it is possible to protect the kernel's memory whilst it is running (provided >> you don't have nommu or broken hardware and you don't let userspace concoct any >> DMA request it likes) which mostly closes those other vectors I mentioned. >> This isn't something I intended to look at with this patch. Those are separate >> holes. > > Exactly and as long as there are these holes, these patches are only > kernel bloat. The simple verification can also be done in userspace and > module signing offers no real security. > What real value do these patches provide, that can't be reached via other > means? Who else than distributions would be interested in this? Pretty > much any use you initially mentioned can be done in simpler ways, e.g. > anyone afraid of modules simply disables module loading completely.
this issue, and these holes keep comeing up in discussions, why can't these holes be closed? I seem to remember seeing patches that would remove /dev/kmem being sent to the list, but they weren't accepted into the kernel (and I seem to remember people being against the concept of removeing them, not against techincal details of the patches. but this was many years ago)
at one point I remember hearing that X required raw /dev/kmem, but for servers you don't need/want X anyway, so this is a useful option even if X doesn't get fixed.
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