Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S964904AbbEVADI (ORCPT ); Thu, 21 May 2015 20:03:08 -0400 Received: from mail-ig0-f171.google.com ([209.85.213.171]:34893 "EHLO mail-ig0-f171.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S964851AbbEVADF (ORCPT ); Thu, 21 May 2015 20:03:05 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <20150521235430.24546.qmail@ns.horizon.com> References: <20150521235430.24546.qmail@ns.horizon.com> Date: Thu, 21 May 2015 17:03:04 -0700 X-Google-Sender-Auth: Z_01NDeODKCCnqIOAJdyKmm7z1A Message-ID: Subject: Re: Should we automatically generate a module signing key at all? From: Linus Torvalds To: George Spelvin Cc: Andy Lutomirski , David Howells , David Woodhouse , Linux Kernel Mailing List , LSM List , petkan@mip-labs.com, "Theodore Ts'o" , Mimi Zohar Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 980 Lines: 23 On Thu, May 21, 2015 at 4:54 PM, George Spelvin wrote: > > The annoying thing is that it's a two-pass process: the kernel has to > have the hashes of ALL of the modules to generate the sibling hashes > for ANY of them. It's also very annoying because the whole build gets much nastier, particularly if you want to have modules in external trees. In short, I don't see any actual *advantages* over just using signed modules. Signing is much more flexible, and thanks to that extra indirection (the signing key), there are no ordering constraints on generating modules vs the kernel. I realize that people have political objections to signing, but it's the better technology, for chissake! Linus -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/