Tag Archives: kernel

Linux Security Summit 2014 (Chicago) -– Call for Participation

The CFP for the 2014 Linux Security Summit is announced.

LSS 2014 will be co-located with LinuxCon North America in Chicago, on the 18th and 19th of August.  We’ll also be co-located with the Kernel Summit this year.

Note that, as always, we’re looking for participation from the general Linux community — not just kernel people, and not just developers.  We’re interested in hearing about feedback from users, and discussing what kinds of security problems we need to be addressing into the future.

This year, we’re looking for discussion topics as well as paper presentations, so if you have anything interesting to talk about, send in a proposal.

The CFP closes on 6th June 21st June.

Save the Date: 2014 Linux Security Summit in Chicago

The 2014 Linux Security Summit will be held on the 18th and 19th of August, co-located with LinuxCon in Chicago, IL, USA.  The Kernel Summit and several other events will also be co-located there this year.

The Call for Participation will be announced later via the LSM mailing list.

Slides from my Security Subsystem Overview at LinuxCon Japan 2012

Whoops. Looks like I forgot to post my slides from last year’s LinuxCon Japan talk on the Linux kernel security subsystem.

Here they are:

http://namei.org/presentations/kernel-security-state-linuxconjp-2012b.pdf

I’ll be giving an update at the upcoming LinuxCon Japan in Tokyo in a couple of weeks.

Linux Security Summit 2012 – Schedule Published

The schedule for LSS 2012 is now published. See also the email announcement.

As previously mentioned, LSS this year will be a two-day event, co-located with LinuxCon.

On Day 1, we’re privileged to have a keynote by Matthew Garrett. He’s one of the best speakers in the community, and I believe he’ll be discussing secure boot.

Following the keynote, we have eight refereed presentations on new and interesting Linux security development topics.

On Day 2, we’ll have kernel security subsystem updates from maintainers, followed by an afternoon of breakout sessions. The breakout sessions are for deeper dives into specific areas, and may include development discussions and hack sessions. An BoF is planned to discuss an LF Security Workgroup, and attendees may propose more sessions in the leadup to the conference by emailing the program committee.

Thanks to all of the committee members for reviewing the proposals and helping to organize the summit — it’s shaping up as an interesting and productive event!

Kernel Security Talk at LinuxCon Japan

Just to let folk know — I’ll be giving a talk on the state of Linux kernel security development at LinuxCon Japan in Yokohama on June 8th. From the abstract:

In this talk, we’ll examine the current state of the Linux kernel security subsystem. Starting with a brief overview of existing features, we’ll discuss recent developments, current efforts and future directions. We’ll also discuss the evolving threat landscape, and the increasing need for mobile and cloud security. This will be a high-level technical discussion aimed at IT professionals. A good general knowledge of operating system and computer security concepts will be advantageous.

I’ll also likely be in Tokyo briefly — if any kernel security development folk there want to meet up, let me know.

Save the date: 2012 Linux Security Summit, 30-31 August, San Diego

This is a pre-announcement so people can start planning travel for the year.

The Linux Security Summit for 2012 will be held on the 30th and 31st of August in San Diego, CA, USA.  It will be co-located with LinuxCon North America, plumbers and the kernel summit.

More details to follow.

New git repository for the Linux kernel security subsystem

I’ve set up a new git repository for the Linux kernel security subsystem on the new kernel.org server.

The URLs are:

git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/jmorris/linux-security.git
http://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/jmorris/linux-security.git
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/jmorris/linux-security.git

Developers should work against the “next” branch.

A web-browsable interface via gitweb may be found at:

http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/jmorris/linux-security.git;a=summary

The temporary repo on selinuxproject.org will go away soon, so please update your repositories.

New GPG Key

In support of the new kernel.org security scheme, I’ve created a new 4096 bit RSA key:

pub   4096R/FA118320 2011-10-23
      Key fingerprint = 4ED7 50E6 F7F9 ACED 29DD  B750 EB75 1458 FA11 8320
uid   James Morris <jmorris@namei.org>

I’ve published the key via the MIT key server.

I’ll continue to host the security subsystem tree on selinuxproject.org until things are fully set up on kernel.org.

Linux Security Summit 2011 – Presentation Slides

Just over a week ago, the 2011 Linux Security Summit was held in Santa Rosa CA, co-located with Linux Plumbers. It ran for a day, starting with refereed presentations, and then round-table discussions.

The home page for the summit is on the kernel.org wiki, and is currently unavailable, so I’m posting links to the slides here:

* Smack is Alive and Well
Casey Schaufler, Intel

* An Overview of the Linux Integrity Subsystem: Use Cases and Demonstration
David Safford and Mimi Zohar, IBM

* Digital Signature support for IMA/EVM
Dmitry Kasatkin and Ryan Ware, Intel  (presented by Casey)

* Protecting the Filesystem Integrity of a Fedora 15 Virtual Machine from Offline Attacks using IMA/EVM
Peter Kruus, The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

* Efficient, TPM-free system integrity checking with device mapper: dm-verity
Will Drewry and Mandeep Baines, Google

* The Case for SE Android
Stephen Smalley, NSA

Roundtable discussions:

* Kernel Hardening [no slides]
Lead by Kees Cook, Canonical and Will Drewry, Google

* LSM Architecture
Lead by Kees Cook, Canonical and Casey Schaufler

The SE Android talk was a last minute replacement for Ryan Ware’s talk on MeeGo (Ryan was unfortunately not able to make it).

See the write-ups by by Paul Moore and LWN.

Feedback so far has been positive.  I think it’s valuable for the security developers to get together like this, after spending the rest of the year working remotely with each other.  Next year, we’ll likely be looking at co-locating with LPC/KS/LinuxCon in San Diego.  It may be worth thinking about expanding to a two-day event, with the first day following the same format, but then splitting into project groups on day two for BoFs/hack sessions.

Contact the program committee if you have any suggestions.

I’d like to thank the LPC folk, and especially Jesse Barnes, for allowing us to co-locate and taking care of all of the logistics — all we had to do was organize the talks and turn up.  Also thanks to the speakers, discussion leaders and attendees.  See you next year!