Gentoo Archives: gentoo-hardened

From: "Francisco Blas Izquierdo Riera (klondike)" <klondike@g.o>
To: gentoo-hardened@l.g.o
Cc: Mathias Krause <minipli@××××××××××.com>
Subject: Re: [gentoo-hardened] The status of grsecurity upstream and hardened-sources downstream
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2017 10:59:55
Message-Id: 2324b4ef-5823-2a41-aec3-d721bd530b3a@gentoo.org
In Reply to: [gentoo-hardened] The status of grsecurity upstream and hardened-sources downstream by "Anthony G. Basile"
1 El 23/06/17 a las 18:28, Anthony G. Basile escribió:
2 > Hi everyone,
3 >
4 > Since late April, grsecurity upstream has stop making their patches
5 > available publicly. Without going into details, the reason for their
6 > decision revolves around disputes about how their patches were being
7 > (ab)used.
8 >
9 > Since the grsecurity patch formed the main core of our hardened-sources
10 > kernel, their decision has serious repercussions for the Hardened Gentoo
11 > project. I will no longer be able to support hardened-sources and will
12 > have to eventually mask and remove it from the tree.
13 >
14 > Hardened Gentoo has two sides to it, kernel hardening (done via
15 > hardened-sources) and toolchain/executable hardening. The two are
16 > interrelated but independent enough that toolchain hardening can
17 > continue on its own. The hardened kernel, however, provided PaX
18 > protection for executables and this will be lost. We did a lot of work
19 > to properly maintain PaX markings in our package management system and
20 > there was no part of Gentoo that wasn't touched by issues stemming from
21 > PaX support.
22 >
23 > I waited two months before saying anything because the reasons were more
24 > of a political nature than some technical issue. At this point, I think
25 > its time to let the community know about the state of affairs with
26 > hardened-sources.
27 >
28 > I can no longer get into the #grsecurity/OFTC channel (nothing personal,
29 > they kicked everyone), and so I have not spoken to spengler or pipacs.
30 > I don't know if they will ever release grsecurity patches again.
31 >
32 > My plan then is as follows. I'll wait one more month and then send out
33 > a news item and later mask hardened-sources for removal. I don't
34 > recommend we remove any of the machinery from Gentoo that deals with PaX
35 > markings.
36 >
37 > I welcome feedback.
38 >
39 Hi!
40
41 I know that minipli has been working on keeping the last released grsec
42 patches up to date on the 4.9 LTS branch and was sharing his work on a
43 github repository.
44
45 I believe his work could be a good alternative for a few more years and
46 give us enough time to see how everything evolves.
47
48 Maybe the upstream people start taking things seriosuly and we can drop
49 the hardened-sources by then (not very optimistic about that though). Or
50 maybe spender and the PaX Team start releasing patches again (as the
51 situation looks now I also doubt it). Eitherway it will buy us time at
52 the expense of lack of new hardware compatibility.
53
54 Klondike

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