Re: [PATCH v2 0/4] Firmware LSM hook

Casey Schaufler
2026-04-13T19:09:11Z

On 4/13/2026 10:36 AM, Casey Schaufler wrote:
> On 4/13/2026 9:42 AM, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
>> On Sun, Apr 12, 2026 at 09:38:35PM -0400, Paul Moore wrote:
>>>> We are not limited to LSM solution, the goal is to intercept commands
>>>> which are submitted to the FW and "security" bucket sounded right to us.
>>> Yes, it does sound "security relevant", but without a well defined
>>> interface/format it is going to be difficult to write a generic LSM to
>>> have any level of granularity beyond a basic "load firmware"
>>> permission.
>> I think to step back a bit, what this is trying to achieve is very
>> similar to the iptables fwmark/secmark scheme.
>>
>> secmark allows the user to specify programmable rules via iptables
>> which results in each packet being tagged with a SELinux context and
>> then the userspace policy can consume that and make security decision
>> based on that.
> If you want to pursue something like this DO NOT USE A u32 TO REPRESENT
> THE SECURITY CONTEXT! Use a struct lsm_context pointer. The limitations
> imposed by a "secid" don't show up in SELinux, which introduced them, but
> they sure do in Smack, and they really gum up the works for general LSM
> stacking.

Whoops. I meant a struct lsm_prop pointer. It must be Monday morning.