[PATCH v5 01/10] capabilities: introduce CAP_PERFMON to kernel and user space

[Alexey Budankov]

On 21.01.2020 17:43, Stephen Smalley wrote:
> On 1/20/20 6:23 AM, Alexey Budankov wrote:
>>
>> Introduce CAP_PERFMON capability designed to secure system performance
>> monitoring and observability operations so that CAP_PERFMON would assist
>> CAP_SYS_ADMIN capability in its governing role for perf_events, i915_perf
>> and other performance monitoring and observability subsystems.
>>
>> CAP_PERFMON intends to harden system security and integrity during system
>> performance monitoring and observability operations by decreasing attack
>> surface that is available to a CAP_SYS_ADMIN privileged process [1].
>> Providing 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 operation more secure.
>>
>> CAP_PERFMON intends to take over CAP_SYS_ADMIN credentials related to
>> system performance monitoring and observability operations and balance
>> 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."
>>
>> 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 embargoed hardware issues mitigation procedure [2].
>> The bugs in the software itself could 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 at linux.intel.com>
>> ---
>>   include/linux/capability.h          | 12 ++++++++++++
>>   include/uapi/linux/capability.h     |  8 +++++++-
>>   security/selinux/include/classmap.h |  4 ++--
>>   3 files changed, 21 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)
>>
>> diff --git a/include/linux/capability.h b/include/linux/capability.h
>> index ecce0f43c73a..8784969d91e1 100644
>> --- a/include/linux/capability.h
>> +++ b/include/linux/capability.h
>> @@ -251,6 +251,18 @@ extern bool privileged_wrt_inode_uidgid(struct user_namespace *ns, const struct
>>   extern bool capable_wrt_inode_uidgid(const struct inode *inode, int cap);
>>   extern bool file_ns_capable(const struct file *file, struct user_namespace *ns, int cap);
>>   extern bool ptracer_capable(struct task_struct *tsk, struct user_namespace *ns);
>> +static inline bool perfmon_capable(void)
>> +{
>> +    struct user_namespace *ns = &init_user_ns;
>> +
>> +    if (ns_capable_noaudit(ns, CAP_PERFMON))
>> +        return ns_capable(ns, CAP_PERFMON);
>> +
>> +    if (ns_capable_noaudit(ns, CAP_SYS_ADMIN))
>> +        return ns_capable(ns, CAP_SYS_ADMIN);
>> +
>> +    return false;
>> +}
> 
> Why _noaudit()?  Normally only used when a permission failure is non-fatal to the operation.  Otherwise, we want the audit message.

Some of ideas from v4 review.
Well, on the second sight, it defenitly should be logged for CAP_SYS_ADMIN.
Probably it is not so fatal for CAP_PERFMON, but personally 
I would unconditionally log it for CAP_PERFMON as well.
Good catch, thank you.

~Alexey