Groups | Search | Server Info | Keyboard shortcuts | Login | Register [http] [https] [nntp] [nntps]


Groups > linux.kernel > #1627866

Re: [PATCH v4 1/4] KEYS: Insert incompressible bytes to reserve space in bzImage

From Henrique de Moraes Holschuh <hmh@hmh.eng.br>
Newsgroups linux.kernel
Subject Re: [PATCH v4 1/4] KEYS: Insert incompressible bytes to reserve space in bzImage
Date 2017-04-21 01:30 +0200
Message-ID <tytGp-6ND-5@gated-at.bofh.it> (permalink)
References <tysKm-6fJ-9@gated-at.bofh.it> <tysKm-6fJ-17@gated-at.bofh.it>
Organization linux.* mail to news gateway

Show all headers | View raw


On Thu, 20 Apr 2017, Mehmet Kayaalp wrote:
> Include a random filled binary in vmlinux at the space reserved with
> CONFIG_SYSTEM_EXTRA_CERTIFICATE. This results in an uncompressed reserved

Random data is not always going to be completely incompressible.  And
just how much it could be compressed also depends on the compression
engine.

Failures here would be quite annoying, even if they would be rare (not
just due to the randomness factor, but also depending on just how
overprovisioned the space reserved for the extra certificate was when
compared with the real certificate size).

Maybe it would be safer if you test it for incompressability once you
generated the random data (using the same compression engine that the
image will use)?  If it fails, add some overprovisioning and retry...

Alternatively, you could ship a static file with random data that has
been tested to be uncompressible "enough" for every currently supported
compression engine, maybe with a bit of a safety margin just in case a
future compression engine does somewhat better...

-- 
  Henrique Holschuh

Back to linux.kernel | Previous | NextPrevious in thread | Next in thread | Find similar | Unroll thread


Thread

[PATCH v4 0/4] Certificate insertion support for x86 bzImages Mehmet Kayaalp <mkayaalp@linux.vnet.ibm.com> - 2017-04-21 00:30 +0200
  [PATCH v4 1/4] KEYS: Insert incompressible bytes to reserve space in bzImage Mehmet Kayaalp <mkayaalp@linux.vnet.ibm.com> - 2017-04-21 00:30 +0200
    Re: [PATCH v4 1/4] KEYS: Insert incompressible bytes to reserve  space in bzImage Henrique de Moraes Holschuh <hmh@hmh.eng.br> - 2017-04-21 01:30 +0200
      Re: [PATCH v4 1/4] KEYS: Insert incompressible bytes to reserve space  in bzImage Mehmet Kayaalp <mkayaalp@linux.vnet.ibm.com> - 2017-04-21 02:20 +0200
        Re: [PATCH v4 1/4] KEYS: Insert incompressible bytes to reserve  space in bzImage Henrique de Moraes Holschuh <hmh@hmh.eng.br> - 2017-04-21 21:50 +0200
  [PATCH v4 3/4] KEYS: Support for inserting a certificate into x86 bzImage Mehmet Kayaalp <mkayaalp@linux.vnet.ibm.com> - 2017-04-21 00:40 +0200
  [PATCH v4 4/4] KEYS: Print insert-sys-cert information to stdout instead of stderr Mehmet Kayaalp <mkayaalp@linux.vnet.ibm.com> - 2017-04-21 00:40 +0200
  [PATCH v4 2/4] KEYS: Add ELF class-independent certificate insertion support Mehmet Kayaalp <mkayaalp@linux.vnet.ibm.com> - 2017-04-21 00:40 +0200

csiph-web