I don't see any real use case where checking the validity dates of X.509 certificates at parsing time adds any security gain. In contrast, doing so makes MODSIGN unusable on systems without a RTC (or systems with a possible wrong date in a existing RTC, or systems where the RTC is read after the keys got loaded). If something really cares about the dates, it should check them at the time when the certificates are used, not when they are loaded and parsed. So just remove the validity check of the dates in the parser. Signed-off-by: Alexander Holler <holler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx --- Updates to V1: I've moved the below comment from the git commit message to this section so that this patch can be applied without any further modifications. Maybe this raises the statistical possibility that someone presses a button or key to feed this simple patch into the mainline kernel as it fixes a real bug which renders MODSIGN unusable on system without an RTC (which needs to set the time before modsign loads the crypto keys). Because I think modsign is a nice security feature e.g. to prevent rootkits which do modify or add modules, I care about it and try it a last time. There were already 4 variations of this patch (I know about). The first removed the check by adding a config option: https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/2/25/171 The second just removed the return of errors: https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/3/14/247 The third removed parsing of the dates too: https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/3/14/257 And finally V1 of this patch: https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/3/27/449 Here is a thread which explains the motivation for this patch a bit further: https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/2/13/90 crypto/asymmetric_keys/x509_public_key.c | 38 -------------------------------- 1 file changed, 38 deletions(-) diff --git a/crypto/asymmetric_keys/x509_public_key.c b/crypto/asymmetric_keys/x509_public_key.c index 06007f0..52222a2 100644 --- a/crypto/asymmetric_keys/x509_public_key.c +++ b/crypto/asymmetric_keys/x509_public_key.c @@ -106,7 +106,6 @@ error_no_sig: static int x509_key_preparse(struct key_preparsed_payload *prep) { struct x509_certificate *cert; - struct tm now; size_t srlen, sulen; char *desc = NULL; int ret; @@ -137,43 +136,6 @@ static int x509_key_preparse(struct key_preparsed_payload *prep) goto error_free_cert; } - time_to_tm(CURRENT_TIME.tv_sec, 0, &now); - pr_devel("Now: %04ld-%02d-%02d %02d:%02d:%02d\n", - now.tm_year + 1900, now.tm_mon + 1, now.tm_mday, - now.tm_hour, now.tm_min, now.tm_sec); - if (now.tm_year < cert->valid_from.tm_year || - (now.tm_year == cert->valid_from.tm_year && - (now.tm_mon < cert->valid_from.tm_mon || - (now.tm_mon == cert->valid_from.tm_mon && - (now.tm_mday < cert->valid_from.tm_mday || - (now.tm_mday == cert->valid_from.tm_mday && - (now.tm_hour < cert->valid_from.tm_hour || - (now.tm_hour == cert->valid_from.tm_hour && - (now.tm_min < cert->valid_from.tm_min || - (now.tm_min == cert->valid_from.tm_min && - (now.tm_sec < cert->valid_from.tm_sec - ))))))))))) { - pr_warn("Cert %s is not yet valid\n", cert->fingerprint); - ret = -EKEYREJECTED; - goto error_free_cert; - } - if (now.tm_year > cert->valid_to.tm_year || - (now.tm_year == cert->valid_to.tm_year && - (now.tm_mon > cert->valid_to.tm_mon || - (now.tm_mon == cert->valid_to.tm_mon && - (now.tm_mday > cert->valid_to.tm_mday || - (now.tm_mday == cert->valid_to.tm_mday && - (now.tm_hour > cert->valid_to.tm_hour || - (now.tm_hour == cert->valid_to.tm_hour && - (now.tm_min > cert->valid_to.tm_min || - (now.tm_min == cert->valid_to.tm_min && - (now.tm_sec > cert->valid_to.tm_sec - ))))))))))) { - pr_warn("Cert %s has expired\n", cert->fingerprint); - ret = -EKEYEXPIRED; - goto error_free_cert; - } - cert->pub->algo = x509_public_key_algorithms[cert->pkey_algo]; cert->pub->id_type = PKEY_ID_X509; -- 1.8.1.4 -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe stable" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html