From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Do people in this thread not understand that Microsoft frequently contributes to Linux? They've already lost the battle there. They rely on Linux for servers as much as everybody else.
Not necessarily saying this is a good thing or not, but writing off any Linux contributions Microsoft makes would be pretty silly.
Their contributions are welcome and appreciated.
But, given Microsoft's history, any suggestions from them should be treated with skepticism.
It's not like it's a proprietary blob. No one is stupid enough to accept a proprietary security blob from Microsoft.
Moreover, if you click through to the article, you see that this module entirely concerns eBPF, which is essentially unused outside of corporate servers (and Android phones) in the first place and is therefore barely our business to begin with.
Use-case?
Preventing kernel modifications to expand upon the work done for kernel lockdown. Add additional layers to system security.
Kernel_lockdown:
prevent both direct and indirect access to a running kernel image, attempting to protect against unauthorized modification of the kernel image and to prevent access to security and cryptographic data located in kernel memory, [...]
Is anyone having security issues without this patch?
From the mailing list I'm reading that kernel maintainers have heard a few companies looking for something like this, so yes?
Edit:
However, to be clear, the Hornet LSM proposed here seems very reasonable to me and I would have no conceptual objections to merging it upstream. Based on off-list discussions I believe there is a lot of demand for something like this, and I believe many people will be happy to have BPF signature verification in-tree.
They probably named it HORNET for a reason - think Japanese Murder Hornets... What Could Possibly Go Wrong??
It will probably start out as little glitches and slowdowns to destroy faith in your system ("Windows works right all the time") a random 2 second pauses. Finally one day every Linux box in the world crashes, all at the same time, because some 'dummy' in Microsoft deleted the private signing key.
@ikidd After years of Embrace, extend and extinguish, and now the cloud and copilot stuff, can't put my faith on Micro$oft anymore, EVER 🙅🙅🙅♀️
Certainly don't take my posting of this as an endorsement of anything Microsoft does. I loathe Microsoft.
VSCode is one of the best free editors second only to Neovim (and maybe DoomEmacs), and the world runs off GitHub whether we like it or not. Azure runs Linux, and a lot of work has been put into WSL to where it's pretty darn handy if you're forced to use company Windows hardware but need to do Dev/SRE tasks.
Windows 11 and Teams though can die in a tire fire.
the world runs off GitHub whether we like it or not
It doesn't and we don't like it anyway.
PS: to clarify, yes GitHub is wildly popular but, and the kernel is a particularly interesting example, it does not host ALL projects, only a lot of popular ones. A lot of very popular ones are also NOT there but rather on their own git, mailing list, GitLab instance, Gitea, etc. It's a shortcut, I understand that, but by ascertaining it as "truth" it's hiding a reality that is quite different and showing that reliable alternatives do exist.
If you don't want telemetry, you have to use VScodium, and then you don't get to use marketplace. Github didn't start as a Microsoft project or it would be far more enshittified than it is now, but even so Microsoft is sure trying to fuck that up with their Copilot bullshit.
WSL is the definitition of EEE, and has prevented a great deal of Linux-ward movement that might have happened without it, even with IT department resistance. It's a crutch to keep devs from having to go to Linux to get the useful tools, like docker which is a mess on Windows, but just usable enough to get by.
And oh, yes, Teams can get shot with a ball of its own shit and fall into the dumpster fire.
I hope we will learn from the SecureBoot debacle and not give Microsoft the primary signing keys and infrastructure for this again.
You can generate your own.
Yes I can. But I am a Linux system administrator with 20 years of experience. This should not be the level of measurement for stuff like this. 😉
What I meant was: Don't put a Microsoft master trusted authority in the Kernel, unless one chooses to install a Microsoft distribution. And don't go the SSL/TLS way with the huge number of default authorities that get installed on every system. It would be a pain to be forced to always build my own Kernel again just to keep Microsoft or any other institution/company that I find untrustworthy out of it.
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish
Ah yes, the "extended Berkeley Packet Filter".
Wikipedia:
eBPF is a technology that can run programs in a privileged context such as the operating system kernel.
Hornet uses a similar signature verification scheme similar to that of kernel modules. A pkcs#7 signature is appended to the end of an executable file. During an invocation of bpf_prog_load, the signature is fetched from the current task's executable file. That signature is used to verify the integrity of the bpf instructions and maps which where passed into the kernel. Additionally, Hornet implicitly trusts any programs which where loaded from inside kernel rather than userspace, which allows BPF_PRELOAD programs along with outputs for BPF_SYSCALL programs to run.
So this is to make kernel-level instructions from userspace (something that's already happening) more secure.
The thread linked by the OP is Jarkko Sakkinen (kernel maintainer) seemingly saying "show your work, your patch is full of nonsense" in a patch submitted for review to the Linux kernel.
Edit: the OP has edited the link, it used to point to this comment in the mailing list chain.
The thread linked by the OP is Jarkko Sakkinen (kernel maintainer) seemingly saying “show your work, your patch is full of nonsense” in a patch submitted for review to the Linux kernel.
That’s not what he’s saying. He’s saying: ‘You’re using terms which aren’t that familiar to everyone. Could you explain them?’
Loading BPF code from user space is, I hope, only possible with root access to the system. That would mean that an attacker needs root access to exploit BPF, but if an attacker has root access what stops him/her to do anything they want? At this time the system is lost anyway.
Or am I missing anything?
If the executable binary has to be signed with a key, similar to the module signing key, Microsoft could sign their binaries
This, along with secureboot, would prevent the owner of the machine from running eBPF programs Microsoft doesn't want you to run, even with root
Yeah, that's why I am against Microsoft Keys on my systems
I fail to see the positive side of that...
I wasn't trying to give a positive side, I was just explaining why Microsoft wants the feature
Odds are because there isn't one.
Abusers will always try to justify their abuse by saying their victims "don't understand" why it's "necessary."
Backdoor hidden in plain sight?
"Fox proposes new brand of locks for henhouse."
Yeah. Stay in your lane microsoft.
*in
My bad. Not my native language. Thanks though
I have zero interest in anything Microsoft has to say about Free software.
Too bad they have a trojan horse at the LF board of directors.
Who?
Which is supposed to be who?
David Rudin, I guess? It says which company each person is from under their name. (The page defaults to the "Leadership" tab, so you gotta click on the "Board of directors" tab to see the correct list of people.)
Yeah, sorry about that. I don't know why it doesn't straight up lead you to the fight place
fight place
That it is.
I have zero trust in Microsoft's intentions here.
Fuck off, microsoft...
