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authorAlexey Budankov <alexey.budankov@linux.intel.com>2020-04-02 11:45:31 +0300
committerArnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@redhat.com>2020-04-16 12:19:06 -0300
commit980737282232b752bb14dab96d77665c15889c36 (patch)
tree774cdd56f9f1df1b086e71e23ae70f6c0c9b47c8 /security
parent3c29d4483e855b6ba5c6e35b0c81caad7d9e3984 (diff)
capabilities: Introduce CAP_PERFMON to kernel and user space
Introduce the CAP_PERFMON capability designed to secure system performance monitoring and observability operations so that CAP_PERFMON can assist CAP_SYS_ADMIN capability in its governing role for performance monitoring and observability subsystems. CAP_PERFMON hardens system security and integrity during performance monitoring and observability operations by decreasing attack surface that is available to a CAP_SYS_ADMIN privileged process [2]. Providing the access to system performance monitoring and observability operations under CAP_PERFMON capability singly, without the rest of CAP_SYS_ADMIN credentials, excludes chances to misuse the credentials and makes the operation more secure. Thus, CAP_PERFMON implements the principle of least privilege for performance monitoring and observability operations (POSIX IEEE 1003.1e: 2.2.2.39 principle of least privilege: A security design principle that states that a process or program be granted only those privileges (e.g., capabilities) necessary to accomplish its legitimate function, and only for the time that such privileges are actually required) CAP_PERFMON meets the demand to secure system performance monitoring and observability operations for adoption in security sensitive, restricted, multiuser production environments (e.g. HPC clusters, cloud and virtual compute environments), where root or CAP_SYS_ADMIN credentials are not available to mass users of a system, and securely unblocks applicability and scalability of system performance monitoring and observability operations beyond root and CAP_SYS_ADMIN use cases. CAP_PERFMON takes over CAP_SYS_ADMIN credentials related to system performance monitoring and observability operations and balances amount of CAP_SYS_ADMIN credentials following the recommendations in the capabilities man page [1] for CAP_SYS_ADMIN: "Note: this capability is overloaded; see Notes to kernel developers, below." For backward compatibility reasons access to system performance monitoring and observability subsystems of the kernel remains open for CAP_SYS_ADMIN privileged processes but CAP_SYS_ADMIN capability usage for secure system performance monitoring and observability operations is discouraged with respect to the designed CAP_PERFMON capability. Although the software running under CAP_PERFMON can not ensure avoidance of related hardware issues, the software can still mitigate these issues following the official hardware issues mitigation procedure [2]. The bugs in the software itself can be fixed following the standard kernel development process [3] to maintain and harden security of system performance monitoring and observability operations. [1] http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/capabilities.7.html [2] https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/embargoed-hardware-issues.html [3] https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-guide/security-bugs.html Signed-off-by: Alexey Budankov <alexey.budankov@linux.intel.com> Acked-by: James Morris <jamorris@linux.microsoft.com> Acked-by: Serge E. Hallyn <serge@hallyn.com> Acked-by: Song Liu <songliubraving@fb.com> Acked-by: Stephen Smalley <sds@tycho.nsa.gov> Tested-by: Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@redhat.com> Cc: Alexei Starovoitov <ast@kernel.org> Cc: Andi Kleen <ak@linux.intel.com> Cc: Igor Lubashev <ilubashe@akamai.com> Cc: Jiri Olsa <jolsa@redhat.com> Cc: Namhyung Kim <namhyung@kernel.org> Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> Cc: Stephane Eranian <eranian@google.com> Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> Cc: intel-gfx@lists.freedesktop.org Cc: linux-doc@vger.kernel.org Cc: linux-man@vger.kernel.org Cc: linux-security-module@vger.kernel.org Cc: selinux@vger.kernel.org Link: http://lore.kernel.org/lkml/5590d543-82c6-490a-6544-08e6a5517db0@linux.intel.com Signed-off-by: Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@redhat.com>
Diffstat (limited to 'security')
-rw-r--r--security/selinux/include/classmap.h4
1 files changed, 2 insertions, 2 deletions
diff --git a/security/selinux/include/classmap.h b/security/selinux/include/classmap.h
index 986f3ac14282..d233ab3f1533 100644
--- a/security/selinux/include/classmap.h
+++ b/security/selinux/include/classmap.h
@@ -27,9 +27,9 @@
"audit_control", "setfcap"
#define COMMON_CAP2_PERMS "mac_override", "mac_admin", "syslog", \
- "wake_alarm", "block_suspend", "audit_read"
+ "wake_alarm", "block_suspend", "audit_read", "perfmon"
-#if CAP_LAST_CAP > CAP_AUDIT_READ
+#if CAP_LAST_CAP > CAP_PERFMON
#error New capability defined, please update COMMON_CAP2_PERMS.
#endif