[PATCH 00/10] Encrypted Hibernation

[Rafael J. Wysocki]

On Mon, May 9, 2022 at 6:44 PM Evan Green <evgreen at chromium.org> wrote:
>
> On Fri, May 6, 2022 at 9:08 AM Pavel Machek <pavel at ucw.cz> wrote:
> >
> > Hi!
> >
> > > We are exploring enabling hibernation in some new scenarios. However,
> > > our security team has a few requirements, listed below:
> > > 1. The hibernate image must be encrypted with protection derived from
> > >    both the platform (eg TPM) and user authentication data (eg
> > >    password).
> > > 2. Hibernation must not be a vector by which a malicious userspace can
> > >    escalate to the kernel.
> >
> > Can you (or your security team) explain why requirement 2. is needed?
> >
> > On normal systems, trusted userspace handles kernel upgrades (for example),
> > so it can escalate to kernel priviledges.
> >
>
> Our systems are a little more sealed up than a normal distro, we use
> Verified Boot [1]. To summarize, RO firmware with an embedded public
> key verifies that the kernel+commandline was signed by Google. The
> commandline includes the root hash of the rootfs as well (where the
> modules live). So when an update is applied (A/B style, including the
> whole rootfs), assuming the RO firmware stayed RO (which requires
> physical measures to defeat), we can guarantee that the kernel,
> commandline, and rootfs have not been tampered with.
>
> Verified boot gives us confidence that on each boot, we're at least
> starting from known code. This makes it more challenging for an
> attacker to persist an exploit across reboot. With the kernel and
> modules verified, we try to make it non-trivial for someone who does
> manage to gain root execution once from escalating to kernel
> execution. Hibernation would be one obvious escalation route, so we're
> hoping to find a way to enable it without handing out that easy
> primitive.
>
> [1] https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/verified-boot/

So I guess this really is an RFC.

Honestly, I need more time to go through this and there are pieces of
it that need to be looked at other people (like the TPM-related
changes).

Thanks!