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| 1 | + IMA Template Management Mechanism |
| 2 | + |
| 3 | + |
| 4 | +==== INTRODUCTION ==== |
| 5 | + |
| 6 | +The original 'ima' template is fixed length, containing the filedata hash |
| 7 | +and pathname. The filedata hash is limited to 20 bytes (md5/sha1). |
| 8 | +The pathname is a null terminated string, limited to 255 characters. |
| 9 | +To overcome these limitations and to add additional file metadata, it is |
| 10 | +necessary to extend the current version of IMA by defining additional |
| 11 | +templates. For example, information that could be possibly reported are |
| 12 | +the inode UID/GID or the LSM labels either of the inode and of the process |
| 13 | +that is accessing it. |
| 14 | + |
| 15 | +However, the main problem to introduce this feature is that, each time |
| 16 | +a new template is defined, the functions that generate and display |
| 17 | +the measurements list would include the code for handling a new format |
| 18 | +and, thus, would significantly grow over the time. |
| 19 | + |
| 20 | +The proposed solution solves this problem by separating the template |
| 21 | +management from the remaining IMA code. The core of this solution is the |
| 22 | +definition of two new data structures: a template descriptor, to determine |
| 23 | +which information should be included in the measurement list; a template |
| 24 | +field, to generate and display data of a given type. |
| 25 | + |
| 26 | +Managing templates with these structures is very simple. To support |
| 27 | +a new data type, developers define the field identifier and implement |
| 28 | +two functions, init() and show(), respectively to generate and display |
| 29 | +measurement entries. Defining a new template descriptor requires |
| 30 | +specifying the template format, a string of field identifiers separated |
| 31 | +by the '|' character. While in the current implementation it is possible |
| 32 | +to define new template descriptors only by adding their definition in the |
| 33 | +template specific code (ima_template.c), in a future version it will be |
| 34 | +possible to register a new template on a running kernel by supplying to IMA |
| 35 | +the desired format string. In this version, IMA initializes at boot time |
| 36 | +all defined template descriptors by translating the format into an array |
| 37 | +of template fields structures taken from the set of the supported ones. |
| 38 | + |
| 39 | +After the initialization step, IMA will call ima_alloc_init_template() |
| 40 | +(new function defined within the patches for the new template management |
| 41 | +mechanism) to generate a new measurement entry by using the template |
| 42 | +descriptor chosen through the kernel configuration or through the newly |
| 43 | +introduced 'ima_template=' kernel command line parameter. It is during this |
| 44 | +phase that the advantages of the new architecture are clearly shown: |
| 45 | +the latter function will not contain specific code to handle a given template |
| 46 | +but, instead, it simply calls the init() method of the template fields |
| 47 | +associated to the chosen template descriptor and store the result (pointer |
| 48 | +to allocated data and data length) in the measurement entry structure. |
| 49 | + |
| 50 | +The same mechanism is employed to display measurements entries. |
| 51 | +The functions ima[_ascii]_measurements_show() retrieve, for each entry, |
| 52 | +the template descriptor used to produce that entry and call the show() |
| 53 | +method for each item of the array of template fields structures. |
| 54 | + |
| 55 | + |
| 56 | + |
| 57 | +==== SUPPORTED TEMPLATE FIELDS AND DESCRIPTORS ==== |
| 58 | + |
| 59 | +In the following, there is the list of supported template fields |
| 60 | +('<identifier>': description), that can be used to define new template |
| 61 | +descriptors by adding their identifier to the format string |
| 62 | +(support for more data types will be added later): |
| 63 | + |
| 64 | + - 'd': the digest of the event (i.e. the digest of a measured file), |
| 65 | + calculated with the SHA1 or MD5 hash algorithm; |
| 66 | + - 'n': the name of the event (i.e. the file name), with size up to 255 bytes; |
| 67 | + - 'd-ng': the digest of the event, calculated with an arbitrary hash |
| 68 | + algorithm (field format: [<hash algo>:]digest, where the digest |
| 69 | + prefix is shown only if the hash algorithm is not SHA1 or MD5); |
| 70 | + - 'n-ng': the name of the event, without size limitations. |
| 71 | + |
| 72 | + |
| 73 | +Below, there is the list of defined template descriptors: |
| 74 | + - "ima": its format is 'd|n'; |
| 75 | + - "ima-ng" (default): its format is 'd-ng|n-ng'. |
| 76 | + |
| 77 | + |
| 78 | + |
| 79 | +==== USE ==== |
| 80 | + |
| 81 | +To specify the template descriptor to be used to generate measurement entries, |
| 82 | +currently the following methods are supported: |
| 83 | + |
| 84 | + - select a template descriptor among those supported in the kernel |
| 85 | + configuration ('ima-ng' is the default choice); |
| 86 | + - specify a template descriptor name from the kernel command line through |
| 87 | + the 'ima_template=' parameter. |
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