Re: [Tails-dev] Memory Erasure Development

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Autore: Daniel Kahn Gillmor
Data:  
To: intrigeri, Harlan Lieberman-Berg
CC: Tails developers
Oggetto: Re: [Tails-dev] Memory Erasure Development
On Mon 2017-01-02 14:46:30 -0500, intrigeri wrote:
> Now, taking a step back, I wonder: why does why GRKERNSEC_KMEM
> disables kexec?
>
> Is it because it's deemed dangerous in itself? Then perhaps it's be
> worth asking grsec people if they'd be open to controlling the kexec
> part with a more atomic setting.
>
> Or because it's broken by other protections brought by this feature?
> If it is so, how hard would it be to fix that?


I'd suspect (based on no concrete knowledge, sorry!) that it's the
former -- kexec gives complete control over the system to some other
kernel, which is bad news if you can't trust that other kernel to do
safe things.

I think reaching out to the grsec folks here and explaining the Tails
use case is a good idea.

    --dkg