Re: Secure reboot

From: Crispin Cowan (crispinat_private)
Date: Mon Aug 18 2003 - 15:19:39 PDT

  • Next message: Michael Halcrow: "Re: Secure reboot"

    Michael Halcrow wrote:
    
    >On Mon, Aug 18, 2003 at 11:16:36AM -0700, Seth Arnold wrote:
    >  
    >
    >>I guess I don't understand your security goals.
    >>    
    >>
    >Perhaps I should have made myself more clear on this.  I want to
    >implement BSD Secure Levels as an LSM.
    >
    >I want my policies to be enforced whenever I am in a secure level
    >greater than or equal to 1, except when an atomic shutdown operation
    >is taking place.  That is, once the security has been relaxed to allow
    >shutdown-related operations, an attacker cannot stop or otherwise
    >hijack the shutdown process to obtain unauthorized control.
    >
    I still don't understand the goal, but that's because I never understood 
    the idea behind BSD Secure Levels. The pseudo code you provided doesn't 
    help, because I don't understand the implicit semantics of the 
    seclvl_capable function.
    
    So, there you are in Secure Level 1 (or greater). You want to shut down. 
    The Secure Level thingie largely prevents Joe User from calling umount, 
    shutdown, & such nasties, and prevents Joe User from driving the Secure 
    Level below 1.
    
    Back to Seth's question: who or what is authorized to either shut the 
    machine down, or drive the Secure Level below 1 so that the machine can 
    be shut down?
    
    You need to define a policy of who or what is authorized to disable 
    security (drive Secure Level below 1) or bypass security (shut down 
    despite Secure Level >= 1). Then you need to implement some stuff that 
    enforces that policy.
    
    Crispin
    
    -- 
    Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.           http://immunix.com/~crispin/
    Chief Scientist, Immunix       http://immunix.com
                http://www.immunix.com/shop/
    
    
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