Re: [PATCH v4] firmware_loader: use kernel credentials when reading firmware

[Paul Moore]

On Sun, May 1, 2022 at 8:50 PM Thiébaud Weksteen <tweek@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Device drivers may decide to not load firmware when probed to avoid
> slowing down the boot process should the firmware filesystem not be
> available yet. In this case, the firmware loading request may be done
> when a device file associated with the driver is first accessed. The
> credentials of the userspace process accessing the device file may be
> used to validate access to the firmware files requested by the driver.
> Ensure that the kernel assumes the responsibility of reading the
> firmware.
>
> This was observed on Android for a graphic driver loading their firmware
> when the device file (e.g. /dev/mali0) was first opened by userspace
> (i.e. surfaceflinger). The security context of surfaceflinger was used
> to validate the access to the firmware file (e.g.
> /vendor/firmware/mali.bin).
>
> Previously, Android configurations were not setting up the
> firmware_class.path command line argument and were relying on the
> userspace fallback mechanism. In this case, the security context of the
> userspace daemon (i.e. ueventd) was consistently used to read firmware
> files. More Android devices are now found to set firmware_class.path
> which gives the kernel the opportunity to read the firmware directly
> (via kernel_read_file_from_path_initns). In this scenario, the current
> process credentials were used, even if unrelated to the loading of the
> firmware file.
>
> Signed-off-by: Thiébaud Weksteen <tweek@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: <stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> # 5.10
> ---
> v4: Add stable to Cc
> v3:
>         - Add call to put_cred to avoid a memory leak. Confirmed that no new
>                 memory leak occurs on a Pixel 4a.
>         - Update commit log.
> v2: Add comment
>
>  drivers/base/firmware_loader/main.c | 17 +++++++++++++++++
>  1 file changed, 17 insertions(+)

Reviewed-by: Paul Moore <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

-- 
paul-moore.com