Thanks! and I'll watch the video... Privileged containers!.... never!....
On Thu, Sep 19, 2019 at 9:06 PM Michael Jennings <m...@lanl.gov> wrote: > On Thursday, 19 September 2019, at 19:27:38 (-0400), > Fulcomer, Samuel wrote: > > > I obviously haven't been keeping up with any security concerns over the > use > > of Singularity. In a 2-3 sentence nutshell, what are they? > > So before I do that, if you have a few minutes, I do think you'll find > it worth your time to go to https://youtu.be/H6VrjowOOF4?t=2361 (it'll > start about 39 minutes in) and watch at least those next 8 or so minutes. > I go into some detail about the security track records of multiple > container runtimes and provide factual data so that folks can make their > own risk assessments rather than just giving my personal opinion. (The > video does cut off the right side of the slides, but the slide deck is > available at > https://permalink.lanl.gov/object/tr?what=info:lanl-repo/lareport/LA-UR-19-22663 > for anyone interested.) > > If you really don't want to watch the video, though, I can provide a few > of the data points. > > First off, if you have not read it before, you really should read > Matthias Gerstner's assessment after doing a code review and security > audit on Singularity 2.6.0 to see if it could be packaged for SuSE: > https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2018/12/12/2 > The quotes I used on the slide for my talk came from comments he made in > the linked SuSE Bugzilla bug -- which, for unknown reasons, was > re-locked by SuSE after previously being unlocked once the bug report > was public! -- regarding whether or not, and under what constraints, to > include and support Singularity on SuSE. Matthias is a widely respected > security expert in the OSS community, so I trust his assessment and > insight. And his audit alone found 5 or 6 CVE-worthy vulnerabilities at > once. > > Additionally, as I mentioned in the video, during the 3-year period > 2016-2018, there were at least 17 different vulnerabilities found in > Singularity. Also, of the 9 releases they did during 2018, 7 of those > were security releases to fix vulnerabilities (and frequently more than > 1 at a time). That's...not great. Especially in an environment like > ours where saying "security is important" is an understatement of > nuclear proportions! ;-) > > And finally, while we were hopeful that the rewrite in Go (version 3.0 > and above) would correct the security failings in the code, there've > already been multiple serious vulnerabilities (all grouped together > under a single CVE identifier, CVE-2019-11328), at least one of which > was essentially a replica of one of the flaws fixed in 2.6.0 under > CVE-2018-12021! And you don't need to take my word for it, either: > https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2019/05/16/1 > > It's hard to say if the above trend will continue...but not all sites > can afford to take those kinds of risks. > > And while Shifter's security track record is spotless to date, I would > still summarize the overall lesson to be learned as, "Don't use > privileged container runtimes. Use user namespaces. That's what > they're there for." And before anyone yells at me, yes I know > Singularity advertises user namespace support and non-setuid operation. > But it doesn't seem to be very widely used or adequately exercised, and > AFAICT the default mode of operation in both RPMs and build-from-src is > via setuid binaries. So using a natively unprivileged runtime still > seems the less risky choice, in my personal assessment. > > Yes, I know that was more than a "2-3 sentence nutshell," but hopefully > it was helpful anyway! :-) > > Michael > > -- > Michael E. Jennings <m...@lanl.gov> > HPC Systems Team, Los Alamos National Laboratory > Bldg. 03-2327, Rm. 2341 W: +1 (505) 606-0605 >
