Re: [PATCH v2] IMA: support for duplicate data measurement

Mimi Zohar
2021-02-17T20:40:30Z

On Wed, 2021-02-17 at 10:53 -0800, Tushar Sugandhi wrote:
> Thanks for the feedback Mimi.
> Appreciate it.
>
> On 2021-02-17 7:03 a.m., Mimi Zohar wrote:
> > Hi Tushar,
> >
> > The Subject line could be improved. Perhaps something like - "IMA:
> > support for duplicate measurement records"
> >
> Will do.
>
> > On Tue, 2021-02-16 at 18:46 -0800, Tushar Sugandhi wrote:
> >> IMA does not measure duplicate data since TPM extend is a very expensive
> >> operation. However, in some cases, the measurement of duplicate data
> >> is necessary to accurately determine the current state of the system.
> >> Eg, SELinux state changing from 'audit', to 'enforcing', and back to
> >> 'audit' again. In this example, currently, IMA will not measure the
> >> last state change to 'audit'. This limits the ability of attestation
> >> services to accurately determine the current state of the measurements
> >> on the system.
> >
> > This patch description is written from your specific usecase
> > perspective, but it impacts file and buffer data measurements as well,
> > not only critical data measurements. In all of these situations, with
> > this patch a new measurement record is added/appended to the
> > measurement list. Please re-write the patch description making it more
> > generic.
> >
> > For example, I would start with something like, "IMA does not include
> > duplicate file, buffer or critical data measurement records ..."
> >
> Agreed.
> I will generalize the description further and send the v3 for review.

It would be good to boot with the ima_policy=tcb policy with/without
your patch and account for the different number of measurements. Are
all the differences related to duplicate measurements - original file
hash -> new file hash -> original file hash - similar to what you
described.

thanks,

Mimi