[PATCH 11/26] powerpc/perf: open access for CAP_PERFMON privileged process

Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo
2020-04-13T16:54:46Z

From: Alexey Budankov <alexey.budankov@linux.intel.com>

Open access to monitoring for CAP_PERFMON privileged process. Providing
the access under CAP_PERFMON capability singly, without the rest of
CAP_SYS_ADMIN credentials, excludes chances to misuse the credentials
and makes operation more secure.

CAP_PERFMON implements the principle of least privilege for performance
monitoring and observability operations (POSIX IEEE 1003.1e 2.2.2.39
principle of least privilege: A security design principle that states
that a process or program be granted only those privileges (e.g.,
capabilities) necessary to accomplish its legitimate function, and only
for the time that such privileges are actually required)

For backward compatibility reasons access to the monitoring remains open
for CAP_SYS_ADMIN privileged processes but CAP_SYS_ADMIN usage for
secure monitoring is discouraged with respect to CAP_PERFMON capability.

Signed-off-by: Alexey Budankov <alexey.budankov@linux.intel.com>
Reviewed-by: James Morris <jamorris@linux.microsoft.com>
Acked-by: Anju T Sudhakar <anju@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Cc: Alexei Starovoitov <ast@kernel.org>
Cc: Andi Kleen <ak@linux.intel.com>
Cc: Igor Lubashev <ilubashe@akamai.com>
Cc: Jiri Olsa <jolsa@redhat.com>
Cc: Namhyung Kim <namhyung@kernel.org>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Serge Hallyn <serge@hallyn.com>
Cc: Song Liu <songliubraving@fb.com>
Cc: Stephane Eranian <eranian@google.com>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: intel-gfx@lists.freedesktop.org
Cc: linux-doc@vger.kernel.org
Cc: linux-man@vger.kernel.org
Cc: linux-security-module@vger.kernel.org
Cc: selinux@vger.kernel.org
Link: http://lore.kernel.org/lkml/ac98cd9f-b59e-673c-c70d-180b3e7695d2@linux.intel.com
Signed-off-by: Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@redhat.com>
---
arch/powerpc/perf/imc-pmu.c | 4 ++--
1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/arch/powerpc/perf/imc-pmu.c b/arch/powerpc/perf/imc-pmu.c
index cb50a9e1fd2d..e837717492e4 100644
--- a/arch/powerpc/perf/imc-pmu.c
+++ b/arch/powerpc/perf/imc-pmu.c
@@ -898,7 +898,7 @@ static int thread_imc_event_init(struct perf_event *event)
if (event->attr.type != event->pmu->type)
return -ENOENT;

- if (!capable(CAP_SYS_ADMIN))
+ if (!perfmon_capable())
return -EACCES;

/* Sampling not supported */
@@ -1307,7 +1307,7 @@ static int trace_imc_event_init(struct perf_event *event)
if (event->attr.type != event->pmu->type)
return -ENOENT;

- if (!capable(CAP_SYS_ADMIN))
+ if (!perfmon_capable())
return -EACCES;

/* Return if this is a couting event */
--
2.21.1