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

Paul Moore
2026-04-13T22:36:19Z

On Mon, Apr 13, 2026 at 12:42 PM Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@ziepe.ca> 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.

Points for thinking outside the box a bit, but from what I've seen
thus far, it differs from secmark in a few important areas. The
secmark concept relies on the admin to configure the network stack to
apply secmark labels to network traffic as it flows through the
system, the LSM then applies security policy to these packets based on
their label. The firmware LSM hooks, at least as I currently
understand them, rely on the LSM hook callback to parse the firmware
op/request and apply a security policy to the request.

We've already talked about the first issue, parsing the request, and
my suggestion was to make the LSM hook call from within the firmware
(the firmware must have some way to call into the kernel/driver code,
no?) so that only the firmware would need to parse the request. If we
wanted to adopt a secmark-esque approach, one could develop a second
parsing mechanism that would be responsible for assigning a LSM label
to the request, and then pass the firmware request to the LSM, but I
do worry a bit about the added complexity associated with keeping the
parser sync'd with the driver/fw.

However, even if we solve the parsing problem, I worry we have
another, closely related issue, of having to categorize all of the
past, present, and future firmware requests into a set of LSM specific
actions. The past and present requests are just a matter of code,
that isn't too worrying, but what do we do about unknown future
requests? Beyond simply encoding the request into a operation
token/enum/int, what additional information beyond the action type
would a LSM need to know to apply a security policy? Would it be
reasonable to blindly allow or reject unknown requests? If so, what
would break?

> ... Once classified we want this to work with more than SELinux
> only, we have a particular interest in the eBPF LSM.

One of the design requirements for the LSM framework is that it
provides an abstraction layer between the kernel and the underlying
security mechanisms implemented by the various LSMs. Some operations
will always fall outside the scope of individual LSMs due to their
nature, but as a general rule we try to ensure that LSM hooks are
useful across multiple LSMs.

> Following the fwmark example, if there was some programmable in-kernel
> function to convert the cmd into a SELinux label would we be able to
> enable SELinux following the SECMARK design?

As Casey already mentioned, any sort of classifier would need to be
able to support multiple LSMs. The only example that comes to mind at
the moment is the NetLabel mechanism which translates between
on-the-wire CIPSO and CALIPSO labels and multiple LSMs (Smack and
SELinux currently).

> Would there be an objection if that in-kernel function was using a
> system-wide eBPF uploaded with some fwctl uAPI?

We'd obviously need to see patches, but there is precedent in
separating labeling from enforcement. We've discussed SecMark and
NetLabel in the networking space, but technically, the VFS/filesystem
xattr implementations could also be considered as a labeling mechanism
outside of the LSM.

> Finally, would there be an objection to enabling the same function in
> eBPF by feeding it the entire command and have it classify and make a
> security decision in a single eBPF program?

Keeping in mind that from an LSM perspective we need to support
multiple implementations, both in terms of language mechanics (eBPF,
Rust, C) and security philosophies (Smack, SELinux, AppArmor, etc.),
so it would be very unlikely that we would want a specific shortcut or
mechanism that would only work for one language or philosophy.

> Is there some other way to enable eBPF?

If one develops a workable LSM hook then I see no reason why one
couldn't write a BPF LSM to use that hook; that's what we do today.

> I see eBPF doesn't interwork with SECMARK today so there isn't a ready example?

I'm not aware of anyone ever doing to work to try/enable secmark with
BPF, but I see no reason why someone couldn't work on that. Just make
sure to take into account Casey's comments about multiple LSM support;
any new LSM interfaces will need to support multiple simultaneous LSMs
(the original secmark work predated that).

However, it seems like direct reuse of secmark isn't what is needed,
or even wanted, you were just using that as an example of separating
labeling from enforcement, yes?

--
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