Date:   Thu, 9 Feb 2017 03:06:38 -0600
From:   "Dr. Greg Wettstein" <greg@...d.enjellic.com>
To:     Jarkko Sakkinen <jarkko.sakkinen@...ux.intel.com>,
        James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@...senPartnership.com>
Cc:     Ken Goldman <kgoldman@...ibm.com>,
        tpmdd-devel@...ts.sourceforge.net,
        linux-security-module@...r.kernel.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [tpmdd-devel] [RFC] tpm2-space: add handling for global session exhaustion

On Jan 30, 11:58pm, Jarkko Sakkinen wrote:
} Subject: Re: [tpmdd-devel] [RFC] tpm2-space: add handling for global sessi

Good morning, I hope the day is going well for everyone.

> I'm kind dilating to an opinion that we would leave this commit out
> from the first kernel release that will contain the resource manager
> with similar rationale as Jason gave me for whitelisting: get the
> basic stuff in and once it is used with some workloads whitelisting
> and exhaustion will take eventually the right form.
>
> How would you feel about this?

I wasn't able to locate the exact context to include but we noted with
interest Ken's comments about his need to support a model where a
client needs a TPM session for transaction purposes which can last a
highly variable amount of time.  That and concerns about command
white-listing, hardware denial of service and related issues tend to
underscore our concerns about how much TPM resource management should
go into the kernel.

Once an API is in the kernel we live with it forever.  Particularly
with respect to TPM2, our field experiences suggest it is way too
early to bake long term functionality into the kernel.

Referring back to Ken's comments about having 20+ clients waiting to
get access to the hardware.  Even with the focus in TPM2 on having it
be more of a cryptographic accelerator are we convinced that the
hardware is ever going to be fast enough for a model of having it
directly service large numbers of transactions in something like a
'cloud' model?

The industry has very solid userspace implementations of TPM2.  It
seems that with respect to resource management about all we would want
in the kernel is enough management to allow multiple privileged
userspace process to establish a root of trust for a TPM2 based
userspace instance with subsequent relinquishment of privilege.  At
that point one has the freedom to implement all sorts of policy.

Given the potential lifespan of these security technologies I think a
kernel design needs to factor in the availability of trusted execution
environment's such as SGX as well.  Politics aside, such environments
do have the ability to significantly modify the guarantees which can
be afforded to architectural models which focus on using the hardware
TPM as a root of trust for userspace implementations of 'TPM'
functionality and policy.

We can always add functionality to the kernel but we can never
subtract.  It is way too early to lock security architecture decisions
into the kernel.

> /Jarkko

Have a good weekend.

Greg

}-- End of excerpt from Jarkko Sakkinen

As always,
Dr. G.W. Wettstein, Ph.D.   Enjellic Systems Development, LLC.
4206 N. 19th Ave.           Specializing in information infra-structure
Fargo, ND  58102            development.
PH: 701-281-1686
FAX: 701-281-3949           EMAIL: greg@...ellic.com
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