Re: [PATCH 1/9] Known exploit detection

James Morris
2013-12-13T05:08:12Z

On Thu, 12 Dec 2013, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 12, 2013 at 07:25:23PM -0500, Dave Jones wrote:
> > On Thu, Dec 12, 2013 at 01:13:41PM -0800, Kees Cook wrote:
> >
> > > - who will keep adding these triggers going forward?
> >

I think we'd need to have someone commit to maintaining this long term
before seriously considering it as part of mainline. Over time it will
become increasingly useless if new triggers aren't added.

What happens when code is refactored, who refactors the triggers?

> > also..
> >
> > - Who will test the existing triggers are doing the right thing when related code changes.
>
> And:
> - how do you determine an "expoit attempt" from "userspace program
> doing something stupid" / "corrupted filesytem mounted"?
>

Right, and if there are enough false positives, it'll end up being quite
useless.

I suspect this kind of thing is better done in userspace anti-malware
scanning.

> I really don't like this, it means that our normal error handling for
> userspace data will suddenly all have CVE entries on them over time.
> How is that helpful to anyone?
>
> Think ahead in 10-20 years, what is the code paths going to look like
> then? Horrible...

Agree.

This could make an interesting research project outside of the kernel. It
doesn't belong in mainline without at least first being proven in the
field and also properly maintained long term, if at all.

--
James Morris
<jmorris@namei.org>