README.md

Secure Deployment for Challenging Environments

BSc. Thesis hopefully progressing with peer pressure from OUSPG Open.

Research question/problem (Msc.): How to securely deploy/provision Linux installations over insecure network/Internet using trusted starting point?

Research question/problem (BSc.): Smaller subset of the above :)

things

• Layers to consider:

  • Hardware, boot, OS, configuration management, application
  • e.g. Physical server + USB media, iPXE, Alpine, cloud-init, Docker
  • e.g. Virtualization + PXE, iPXE, Some OS, ... (See #2)
  • UEFI Secure Boot out of scope?
  • Trusted Computing out of scope?
  • How high to climb in this thesis?

• Chain of trust:

  • We have to trust something. then pass the trust forward.
    • -> boot image which GPG signed which is verified and then written into USB media (See #3)
    • -> trusted USB media includes X.509 certificate pinned HTTPS URL
    • -> Next step (HTTPS) could use HTTP Basic Auth or X.509 client cert for authentication
    • -> HTTPS delivers e.g. GPG public keys for Alpine/CentOS/Debian repository validation
    • -> drop root SSH authorized_keys into installed OS
  • Lots of steps can be public on Internet
    • How to deal with things which can't?
    • Preshared password? X.509 client cert auth?
  • What are "impossible" (beyond reasonable effort) or hard to trust?
    • Hardware backdoors/vulnerabilities, OS distribution backdoors/vulns

• What existing software and features there already is?

  • Network booting: iPXE?
  • Certificate pinning: is iPXE's pinning sufficient?
  • Repository and package signing: GPG signatures? OpenBSD Signify?
  • Configuration management: cloud-init? Ansible? Salt? Puppet?
  • Applications: Docker?

• Implementation

  • Easy to copy and adjust ("Personal Boot Infrastructure")
    • git clone, $EDITOR config, scripts/build, git push https://example.com/own/repo
    • Trust of the build environment
      • Building certificate pinnings with TLS MITM not worth it
      • Signing keys, etc. need to be protected
  • Easy to build
    • Dockerize builds?
    • Generate as much as possible from simple configuration
  • Future work (easily out of scope for this thesis):
    • Maybe everything into one USB stick to work without Internet
    • Boot verifies signed commits from Git repo

• Describe experiments

  • Attack the implementation
  • MITM
  • Broken keys

• Describe attack vectors

  • For every layer (hardware, boot, HTTPS, X.509/TLS, OS install, etc)
  • What we can fight against and what we can't do

• stuff to read:

  • Waste of time: Secure Server Provisioning and Communication Mechanism in Cloud

  • Information security auditing tool for authorities – Katakri 2015

    • http://formin.fi/public/default.aspx?contentid=328713&contentlan=2&culture=en-US
    • http://www.defmin.fi/files/3417/Katakri_2015_Information_security_audit_tool_for_authorities_Finland.pdf

  • x86 Network Booting: Integrating gPXE and PXELINUX

    • https://kernel.org/doc/ols/2008/ols2008v1-pages-9-18.pdf

  • An Updated Performance Comparison of Virtual Machines and Linux Containers

    • https://domino.research.ibm.com/library/cyberdig.nsf/papers/0929052195DD819C85257D2300681E7B/$File/rc25482.pdf
    • http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=7095802&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fxpls%2Fabs_all.jsp%3Farnumber%3D7095802

  • An Approach for Secure Software Installation

    • http://static.usenix.org/legacy/events/lisa02/tech/full_papers/venkatakrishnan/venkatakrishnan_html/

  • signify: Securing OpenBSD From Us To You

    • https://www.openbsd.org/papers/bsdcan-signify.html

  • Developing Software in a Hostile Environment

    • https://www.openbsd.org/papers/dev-sw-hostile-env.html

  • CAIA Testbed for TEACUP Experiments

    • Notes: Unsecure boot (DHCP, TFTP, HTTP)
    • version 1: http://caia.swin.edu.au/reports/140314B/CAIA-TR-140314B.pdf
    • version 2: http://caia.swin.edu.au/reports/150210C/CAIA-TR-150210C.pdf

  • Operating System Support for Run-Time Security with a Trusted Execution Environment

    • https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Javier_Gonzalez33/publication/297732884_Operating_Security_System_Support_for_Run-Time_Security_with_a_Trusted_Execution_Environment/links/56e1b86208ae40dc0abf5981.pdf

  • Fedora's Secure Boot FAQ

    • https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Secureboot

  • Trusted Computing

    • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Computing

  • Android Verified Boot

    • https://source.android.com/security/verifiedboot/

  • Device-Mapper's "verity" target

    • https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/device-mapper/verity.txt

  • 1989: License of Science in Technology. Helsinki University of Technology, department of Electrical Engineering. Hannu H. Kari: "Diskless Workstations in a Local Area Network".

  • Docker Security Cheat Sheet

    • https://github.com/konstruktoid/Docker/blob/master/Security/CheatSheet.adoc

  • CIS CentOS Linux 6 Benchmark

    • https://benchmarks.cisecurity.org/tools2/linux/CIS_CentOS_Linux_6_Benchmark_v2.0.0.pdf

  • CIS CentOS Linux 7 Benchmark

    • https://benchmarks.cisecurity.org/tools2/linux/CIS_CentOS_Linux_7_Benchmark_v2.0.0.pdf

  • CIS Distribution Independent Linux

    • https://benchmarks.cisecurity.org/tools2/linux/CIS_Distribution_Independent_Linux_Benchmark_v1.0.0-CC.pdf

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Security Guide

    • https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Security_Guide/

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Security Guide

    • https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/7/html/Security_Guide/

  • Trusted images

    • http://docs.openstack.org/security-guide/instance-management/security-services-for-instances.html#trusted-images

  • ETSI GS NFV-SEC 001 V1.1.1 (2014-10): Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV); NFV Security; Problem Statement

    • http://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_gs/NFV-SEC/001_099/001/01.01.01_60/gs_nfv-sec001v010101p.pdf

  • Secure lazy provisioning of virtual desktops to a portable storage device a * https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2287068&CFID=641474301&CFTOKEN=92782901

    • https://www.researchgate.net/publication/239761571_Secure_lazy_provisioning_of_virtual_desktops_to_a_portable_storage_device

  • Characterizing and Avoiding Routing Detours Through Surveillance States

    • https://arxiv.org/abs/1605.07685

Implementation thingies

• iPXE management:
  • iPXE supports local keyboard & display, serial console and syslog over TLS
  • Maybe it's possible to use local keyb&disp, have serial console available and log everything to syslogs?
  • syslogs: http://ipxe.org/cfg/syslogs