[PATCH v3 06/11] evm: Ignore INTEGRITY_NOLABEL if no HMAC key is loaded

[Roberto Sassu]

> From: Mimi Zohar [mailto:zohar at linux.ibm.com]
> Sent: Friday, December 4, 2020 2:05 PM
> On Fri, 2020-12-04 at 08:05 +0000, Roberto Sassu wrote:
> > > From: Mimi Zohar [mailto:zohar at linux.ibm.com]
> > > Sent: Thursday, December 3, 2020 9:43 PM
> > > Hi Roberto,
> > >
> > > On Wed, 2020-11-11 at 10:22 +0100, Roberto Sassu wrote:
> > > > When a file is being created, LSMs can set the initial label with the
> > > > inode_init_security hook. If no HMAC key is loaded, the new file will
> have
> > > > LSM xattrs but not the HMAC.
> > > >
> > > > Unfortunately, EVM will deny any further metadata operation on new
> > > files,
> > > > as evm_protect_xattr() will always return the INTEGRITY_NOLABEL
> error.
> > > This
> > > > would limit the usability of EVM when only a public key is loaded, as
> > > > commands such as cp or tar with the option to preserve xattrs won't
> work.
> > > >
> > > > Ignoring this error won't be an issue if no HMAC key is loaded, as the
> > > > inode is locked until the post hook, and EVM won't calculate the HMAC
> on
> > > > metadata that wasn't previously verified. Thus this patch checks if an
> > > > HMAC key is loaded and if not, ignores INTEGRITY_NOLABEL.
> > >
> > > I'm not sure what problem this patch is trying to solve.
> > > evm_protect_xattr() is only called by evm_inode_setxattr() and
> > > evm_inode_removexattr(), which first checks whether
> > > EVM_ALLOW_METADATA_WRITES is enabled.
> >
> > The idea is to also support EVM verification when only a public key
> > is loaded. An advantage to do that is that for example we can prevent
> > accidental metadata changes when the signature is portable.
> 
> Right, there are a couple of  scenarios.  Let's be more specific as to
> which scenario this patch is addressing.
> 
> - a public key is loaded and EVM_ALLOW_METADATA_WRITES is enabled,
> - a public key is loaded and EVM_ALLOW_METADATA_WRITES is disabled,
> - an HMAC key is loaded
> 
> For the first and last case, this patch shouldn't be necessary.  Only
> the second case, with EVM_ALLOW_METADATA_WRITES disabled, probably
> does
> not work.  I would claim that is working as designed.

If there is no HMAC key loaded and a file is created, I think EVM should
not expect an HMAC and return an error. If we do metadata verification
only when an HMAC key is loaded, we miss a functionality that could be
useful also when only a public key is loaded.

Roberto

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