Kernel Hardening; Protect Linux User Accounts against Brute Force Attacks; Improve Entropy Collection; Strong Linux User Account Separation; Enhances Misc Security Settings - https://www.kicksecure.com/wiki/Security-misc
Looks like an upstream bug caused a leak of sensitive data inside this file on Xen systems. A kernel patch is on the way to fix it but it may be a long time before it's in stable Debian.
File permissions are 444.
For example, the startup_xen is built at 0xffffffff82465180 and
commit_creds is built at 0xffffffff810ad570 which could read from
the /boot/System.map. And the loaded address of startup_xen is
0xffffffffbc265180 which read from /sys/kernel/notes. So the loaded
address of commit_creds is 0xffffffffbc265180 - (0xffffffff82465180
0xffffffff810ad570) = 0xffffffffbaead570.
I've cc: the hardening list on this, I'm sure the developers there have
opinions about this.
Oh eww, why is Xen spewing addresses into the notes section? (This must
be how it finds its entry point? But that would be before relocations
happen...)
But yes, I can confirm that relocations are done against the .notes
section at boot, so the addresses exposed in .notes is an immediate
KASLR offset exposure.
Looks like an upstream bug caused a leak of sensitive data inside this file on Xen systems. A kernel patch is on the way to fix it but it may be a long time before it's in stable Debian. File permissions are 444.
https://lwn.net/Articles/962782/ https://lore.kernel.org/linux-hardening/202402180028.6DB512C50@keescook/