On 15/04/2020 18:25, deven.desai@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote: > From: Deven Bowers <deven.desai@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> > > Overview: > ------------------------------------ > > IPE is a Linux Security Module which allows for a configurable > policy to enforce integrity requirements on the whole system. It > attempts to solve the issue of Code Integrity: that any code being > executed (or files being read), are identical to the version that > was built by a trusted source. > > The type of system for which IPE is designed for use is an embedded device > with a specific purpose (e.g. network firewall device in a data center), > where all software and configuration is built and provisioned by the owner. > > Specifically, a system which leverages IPE is not intended for general > purpose computing and does not utilize any software or configuration > built by a third party. An ideal system to leverage IPE has both mutable > and immutable components, however, all binary executable code is immutable. > > The scope of IPE is constrained to the OS. It is assumed that platform > firmware verifies the the kernel and optionally the root filesystem (e.g. > via U-Boot verified boot). IPE then utilizes LSM hooks to enforce a > flexible, kernel-resident integrity verification policy. > > IPE differs from other LSMs which provide integrity checking (for instance, > IMA), as it has no dependency on the filesystem metadata itself. The > attributes that IPE checks are deterministic properties that exist solely > in the kernel. Additionally, IPE provides no additional mechanisms of > verifying these files (e.g. IMA Signatures) - all of the attributes of > verifying files are existing features within the kernel, such as dm-verity > or fsverity. > > IPE provides a policy that allows owners of the system to easily specify > integrity requirements and uses dm-verity signatures to simplify the > authentication of allowed objects like authorized code and data. > > IPE supports two modes, permissive (similar to SELinux's permissive mode) > and enforce. Permissive mode performs the same checks, and logs policy > violations as enforce mode, but will not enforce the policy. This allows > users to test policies before enforcing them. > > The default mode is enforce, and can be changed via the kernel commandline > parameter `ipe.enforce=(0|1)`, or the sysctl `ipe.enforce=(0|1)`. The > ability to switch modes can be compiled out of the LSM via setting the > config CONFIG_SECURITY_IPE_PERMISSIVE_SWITCH to N. > > IPE additionally supports success auditing. When enabled, all events > that pass IPE policy and are not blocked will emit an audit event. This > is disabled by default, and can be enabled via the kernel commandline > `ipe.success_audit=(0|1)` or the sysctl `ipe.success_audit=(0|1)`. > > Policies can be staged at runtime through securityfs and activated through > sysfs. Please see the Deploying Policies section of this cover letter for > more information. > > The IPE LSM is compiled under CONFIG_SECURITY_IPE. > > Policy: > ------------------------------------ > > IPE policy is designed to be both forward compatible and backwards > compatible. There is one required line, at the top of the policy, > indicating the policy name, and the policy version, for instance: > > policy_name="Ex Policy" policy_version=0.0.0 > > The policy version indicates the current version of the policy (NOT the > policy syntax version). This is used to prevent roll-back of policy to > potentially insecure previous versions of the policy. > > The next portion of IPE policy, are rules. Rules are formed by key=value > pairs, known as properties. IPE rules require two properties: "action", > which determines what IPE does when it encounters a match against the > policy, and "op", which determines when that rule should be evaluated. > Thus, a minimal rule is: > > op=EXECUTE action=ALLOW > > This example will allow any execution. Additional properties are used to > restrict attributes about the files being evaluated. These properties are > intended to be deterministic attributes that are resident in the kernel. > Available properties for IPE described in the properties section of this > cover-letter, the repository available in Appendix A, and the kernel > documentation page. > > Order does not matter for the rule's properties - they can be listed in > any order, however it is encouraged to have the "op" property be first, > and the "action" property be last, for readability. > > Additionally, rules are evaluated top-to-bottom. As a result, any > revocation rules, or denies should be placed early in the file to ensure > that these rules are evaluated before a rule with "action=ALLOW" is hit. > > IPE policy is designed to be forward compatible and backwards compatible, > thus any failure to parse a rule will result in the line being ignored, > and a warning being emitted. If backwards compatibility is not required, > the kernel commandline parameter and sysctl, ipe.strict_parse can be > enabled, which will cause these warnings to be fatal. Ignoring unknown command may lead to inconsistent beaviors. To achieve forward compatibility, I think it would be better to never ignore unknown rule but to give a way to userspace to known what is the current kernel ABI. This could be done with a securityfs file listing the current policy grammar.