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From:   Amir Goldstein <amir73il@gmail.com>
Date:   Fri, 8 Dec 2023 23:55:19 +0200
Message-ID: <CAOQ4uxivpZ+u0A5kE962XST37-ey2Tv9EtddnZQhk3ohRkcQTw@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [RFC][PATCH] overlayfs: Redirect xattr ops on security.evm to security.evm_overlayfs
To:     Roberto Sassu <roberto.sassu@huaweicloud.com>
Cc:     miklos@szeredi.hu, linux-unionfs@vger.kernel.org,
        linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, zohar@linux.ibm.com,
        paul@paul-moore.com, stefanb@linux.ibm.com, jlayton@kernel.org,
        brauner@kernel.org, linux-integrity@vger.kernel.org,
        linux-security-module@vger.kernel.org,
        linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org,
        Roberto Sassu <roberto.sassu@huawei.com>
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On Fri, Dec 8, 2023 at 7:25=E2=80=AFPM Roberto Sassu
<roberto.sassu@huaweicloud.com> wrote:
>
> From: Roberto Sassu <roberto.sassu@huawei.com>
>
> EVM updates the HMAC in security.evm whenever there is a setxattr or
> removexattr operation on one of its protected xattrs (e.g. security.ima).
>
> Unfortunately, since overlayfs redirects those xattrs operations on the
> lower filesystem, the EVM HMAC cannot be calculated reliably, since lower
> inode attributes on which the HMAC is calculated are different from upper
> inode attributes (for example i_generation and s_uuid).
>
> Although maybe it is possible to align such attributes between the lower
> and the upper inode, another idea is to map security.evm to another name
> (security.evm_overlayfs)

If we were to accept this solution, this will need to be trusted.overlay.ev=
m
to properly support private overlay xattr escaping.

> during an xattr operation, so that it does not
> collide with security.evm set by the lower filesystem.

You are using wrong terminology and it is very confusing to me.
see the overlay mount command has lowerdir=3D and upperdir=3D.
Seems that you are using lower filesystem to refer to the upper fs
and upper filesystem to refer to overlayfs.

>
> Whenever overlayfs wants to set security.evm, it is actually setting
> security.evm_overlayfs calculated with the upper inode attributes. The
> lower filesystem continues to update security.evm.
>

I understand why that works, but I am having a hard time swallowing
the solution, mainly because I feel that there are other issues on the
intersection of overlayfs and IMA and I don't feel confident that this
addresses them all.

If you want to try to convince me, please try to write a complete
model of how IMA/EVM works with overlayfs, using the section
"Permission model" in Documentation/filesystems/overlayfs.rst
as a reference.

Thanks,
Amir.