Re: [PATCH 0/6] MODSIGN: Kernel module signing

Andreas Gruenbacher
2007-02-15T22:13:08Z

On Thursday 15 February 2007 12:34, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:
> On Wed, 14 Feb 2007 22:14:53 PST, Andreas Gruenbacher said:
> > I agree, that's really what should happen. We solve this by marking
> > modules as supported, partner supported, or unsupported, but in an
> > "insecure" way, so partners and users could try to fake the support
> > status of a module and/or remove status flags from Oopses, and
> > cryptography wouldn't save us.
>
> Where cryptography *can* save you is that a partner or user can't fake a
> 'Suse Supported' signature without access to the Suse private key.

No question about that. We actually already get this from rpm signatures. What
would module signatures buy us? The kernel could then reliably determine that
an unsigned module was loaded. But people could still fake their Oopses, or
overwite the flags which indicate that a module's signature didn't match, so
we still wouldn't reliably get at that information.

Andreas