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RE: [Xen-devel] Security Implications of letting customers use theirown kernel


  • To: "Jonathan Tripathy" <jonnyt@xxxxxxxxxxx>, <Xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • From: "James Harper" <james.harper@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2010 14:51:44 +1100
  • Cc:
  • Delivery-date: Wed, 15 Dec 2010 19:52:55 -0800
  • List-id: Xen developer discussion <xen-devel.lists.xensource.com>
  • Thread-index: AcucU3HN81ripgbhR66mIJMgC0uFtwAgJ4dw
  • Thread-topic: [Xen-devel] Security Implications of letting customers use theirown kernel

> 
> Hi Everyone,
> 
> What are the security implications of letting customers install their
> own kernel?
> 
> In my own research, I have only seen things that would compromise
their
> own DomU. My main area on concern is to protect all the other DomUs.
> 
> An area of potential concern is if someone were to build a kernel that
> enabled "No Execute" or "Disable Execution", could that compromise
other
> DomUs? Or would that just leave their DomU vulnerable to running
> malicious code?
> 
> Anyone aware of anything else?
> 

Anything that allows a DomU to compromise Dom0 is a serious security bug
and should be reported and fixed.

Once I get my hands on a proper test box I plan to do some testing on
this as during development of GPLPV I have managed to crash Dom0 due to
pre-release testing of buggy code. This probably hasn't happened since
Xen 3.0.x though, which is ancient now, but I'd like to have some
confidence that nothing I throw at Dom0 will break it.

James


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