[RFC PATCH 0/5] vfs: support for a common kernel file loader (step 1)

[Mimi Zohar]

On Fri, 2016-01-08 at 14:21 -0500, Mimi Zohar wrote:
> For a while it was looked down upon to directly read files from Linux.
> These days there exists a few mechanisms in the kernel that do just this
> though to load a file into a local buffer. There are minor but important
> checks differences on each, we should take all the best practices from
> each of them, generalize them and make all places in the kernel that
> read a file use it.[1]
> 
> One difference is the method for opening the file.  In some cases we
> have a file, while in other cases we have a pathname or a file descriptor.
> 
> Another difference is the security hook calls, or lack of them.  In
> some versions there is a post file read hook, while in others there
> is a pre file read hook.
> 
> This patch set is the first attempt at resolving these differences.  It
> does not attempt to merge the different methods of opening a file, but
> defines a single common kernel file read function with two wrappers.
> Although this patch set defines two new security hooks for pre and post
> file read, it does not attempt to merge the existing security hooks.
> That is left as future work.
> 
> These patches are based on top of the "ima: measuring/appraising files
> read by the kernel".  The latest version of these patches can be found
> in the next-kernel-read branch of:
> git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/zohar/linux-integrity.git

[1] Taken from Luis Rodriguez's wiki -
http://kernelnewbies.org/KernelProjects/common-kernel-loader

Mimi