Tracing system calls with eBPF by doreilly

Description

Many security tools need to record system calls like execve. Using the Linux audit system for this can have a detrimental performance impact in some cases.

Goals

The goal is to investigate eBPF as an alternative and do some benchmarking to see the impact and how it compares to using the audit subsystem.

Progress

BPF done - traceexec

Benchmark report

Resources

eBPF doc

libbpf

libMicro benchmark tool

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Tracing system calls with eBPF by doreilly

Description

Many security tools need to record system calls like execve. Using the Linux audit system for this can have a detrimental performance impact in some cases.

Goals

The goal is to investigate eBPF as an alternative and do some benchmarking to see the impact and how it compares to using the audit subsystem.

Progress

BPF done - traceexec

Benchmark report

Resources

eBPF doc

libbpf

libMicro benchmark tool

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RISC-V emulator in GLSL capable of running Linux by favogt

Description

There are already numerous ways to run Linux and some programs through emulation in a web browser (e.g. x86 and riscv64 on https://bellard.org/jslinux/), but none use WebGL/WebGPU to run the emulation on the GPU.

I already made a PoC of an AArch64 (64-bit Arm) emulator in OpenCL which is unfortunately hindered by a multitude of OpenCL compiler bugs on all platforms (Intel with beignet or the new compute runtime and AMD with Mesa Clover and rusticl). With more widespread and thus less broken GLSL vs. OpenCL and the less complex implementation requirements for RV32 (especially 32bit integers instead of 64bit), that should not be a major problem anymore.

Goals

Write an RISC-V system emulator in GLSL that is capable of booting Linux and run some userspace programs interactively. Ideally it is small enough to work on online test platforms like Shaderoo with a custom texture that contains bootstrap code, kernel and initrd.

Minimum:

riscv32 without FPU (RV32 IMA) and MMU (µClinux), running Linux in M-mode and userspace in U-mode.

Stretch goals:

FPU support, S-Mode support with MMU, SMP. Custom web frontend with more possibilities for I/O (disk image, network?).

Resources

RISC-V ISA Specifications
Shaderoo
OpenGL 4.5 Quick Reference Card

Result as of Hackweek 2024

WebGL turned out to be insufficient, it only supports OpenGL ES 3.0 but imageLoad/imageStore needs ES 3.1. So we switched directions and had to write a native C++ host for the shaders.

As of Hackweek Friday, the kernel attempts to boot and outputs messages, but panics due to missing memory regions.

Since then, some bugs were fixed and enough hardware emulation implemented, so that now Linux boots with framebuffer support and it's possible to log in and run programs!

The repo with a demo video is available at https://github.com/Vogtinator/risky-v

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Improve UML page fault handler by ptesarik

Description

Improve UML handling of segmentation faults in kernel mode. Although such page faults are generally caused by a kernel bug, it is annoying if they cause an infinite loop, or panic the kernel. More importantly, a robust implementation allows to write KUnit tests for various guard pages, preventing potential kernel self-protection regressions.

Goals

Convert the UML page fault handler to use oops_* helpers, go through a few review rounds and finally get my patch series merged in 6.14.

Resources

Wrong initial attempt: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20231215121431.680-1-petrtesarik@huaweicloud.com/T/

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Hacking on sched_ext by flonnegren

Description

Sched_ext upstream has some interesting issues open for grabs:

• core event counters
• topology: Use cpumasks

Goals

Send patches to sched_ext upstream

Also set up perfetto to trace some of the example schedulers.

Resources

https://github.com/sched-ext/scx

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Create a DRM driver for VGA video cards by tdz

Yes, those VGA video cards. The goal of this project is to implement a DRM graphics driver for such devices. While actual hardware is hard to obtain or even run today, qemu emulates VGA output.

VGA has a number of limitations, which make this project interesting.

• There are only 640x480 pixels (or less) on the screen. That resolution is also a soft lower limit imposed by DRM. It's mostly a problem for desktop environments though.
• Desktop environments assume 16 million colors, but there are only 16 colors with VGA. VGA's 256 color palette is not available at 640x480. We can choose those 16 colors freely. The interesting part is how to choose them. We have to build a palette for the displayed frame and map each color to one of the palette's 16 entries. This is called dithering, and VGA's limitations are a good opportunity to learn about dithering algorithms.
• VGA has an interesting memory layout. Most graphics devices use linear framebuffers, which store the pixels byte by byte. VGA uses 4 bitplanes instead. Plane 0 holds all bits 0 of all pixels. Plane 1 holds all bits 1 of all pixels, and so on.

The driver will probably not be useful to many people. But, if finished, it can serve as test environment for low-level hardware. There's some interest in supporting old Amiga and Atari framebuffers in DRM. Those systems have similar limitations as VGA, but are harder to obtain and test with. With qemu, the VGA driver could fill this gap.

Apart from the Wikipedia entry, good resources on VGA are at osdev.net and FreeVGA

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Linux on Cavium CN23XX cards by tsbogend

Before Cavium switched to ARM64 CPUs they developed quite powerful MIPS based SOCs. The current upstream Linux kernel already supports some Octeon SOCs, but not the latest versions. Goal of this Hack Week project is to use the latest Cavium SDK to update the Linux kernel code to let it running on CN23XX network cards.

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VulnHeap by r1chard-lyu

Description

The VulnHeap project is dedicated to the in-depth analysis and exploitation of vulnerabilities within heap memory management. It focuses on understanding the intricate workflow of heap allocation, chunk structures, and bin management, which are essential to identifying and mitigating security risks.

Goals

• Familiarize with heap
  • Heap workflow
  • Chunk and bin structure
  • Vulnerabilities
• Vulnerability
  • Use after free (UAF)
  • Heap overflow
  • Double free
• Use Docker to create a vulnerable environment and apply techniques to exploit it

Resources

• https://heap-exploitation.dhavalkapil.com/divingintoglibc_heap
• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cloudburst/libheap/master/heap.png
• https://github.com/shellphish/how2heap?tab=readme-ov-file

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Kanidm: A safe and modern IDM system by firstyear

Kanidm is an IDM system written in Rust for modern systems authentication. The github repo has a detailed "getting started" on the readme.

Kanidm Github

In addition Kanidm has spawn a number of adjacent projects in the Rust ecosystem such as LDAP, Kerberos, Webauthn, and cryptography libraries.

In this hack week, we'll be working on Quokca, a certificate authority that supports PKCS11/TPM storage of keys, issuance of PIV certificates, and ACME without the feature gatekeeping implemented by other CA's like smallstep.

For anyone who wants to participate in Kanidm, we have documentation and developer guides which can help.

I'm happy to help and share more, so please get in touch!

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Bot to identify reserved data leak in local files or when publishing on remote repository by mdati

Description

Scope here is to prevent reserved data or generally "unwanted", to be pushed and saved on a public repository, i.e. on Github, causing disclosure or leaking of reserved informations.

The above definition of reserved or "unwanted" may vary, depending on the context: sometime secret keys or password are stored in data or configuration files or hardcoded in source code and depending on the scope of the archive or the level of security, it can be either wanted, permitted or not at all.

As main target here, secrets will be registration keys or passwords, to be detected and managed locally or in a C.I. pipeline.

Goals

• Detection:

  • Local detection: detect secret words present in local files;
  • Remote detection: detect secrets in files, in pipelines, going to be transferred on a remote repository, i.e. via git push;

• Reporting:

  • report the result of detection on stderr and/or log files, noticed excluding the secret values.

• Acton:

  • Manage the detection, by either deleting or masking the impacted code or deleting/moving the file itself or simply notify it.

Resources

• Project repository, published on Github (link): m-dati/hkwk24;
• Reference folder: hkwk24/chksecret;
• First pull request (link): PR#1;
• Second PR, for improvements: PR#2;
• README.md and TESTS.md documentation files available in the repo root;
• Test subproject repository, for testing CI on push [TBD].

Notes

We use here some examples of secret words, that still can be improved.
The various patterns to match desired reserved words are written in a separated module, to be on demand updated or customized.

[Legend: TBD = to be done]

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CVE portal for SUSE Rancher products by gmacedo

Description

Currently it's a bit difficult for users to quickly see the list of CVEs affecting images in Rancher, RKE2, Harvester and Longhorn releases. Users need to individually look for each CVE in the SUSE CVE database page - https://www.suse.com/security/cve/ . This is not optimal, because those CVE pages are a bit hard to read and contain data for all SLE and BCI products too, making it difficult to easily see only the CVEs affecting the latest release of Rancher, for example. We understand that certain costumers are only looking for CVE data for Rancher and not SLE or BCI.

Goals

The objective is to create a simple to read and navigate page that contains only CVE data related to Rancher, RKE2, Harvester and Longhorn, where it's easy to search by a CVE ID, an image name or a release version. The page should also provide the raw data as an exportable CSV file.

It must be an MVP with the minimal amount of effort/time invested, but still providing great value to our users and saving the wasted time that the Rancher Security team needs to spend by manually sharing such data. It might not be long lived, as it can be replaced in 2-3 years with a better SUSE wide solution.

Resources

• The page must be simple and easy to read.
• The UI/UX must be as straightforward as possible with minimal visual noise.
• The content must be created automatically from the raw data that we already have internally.
• It must be updated automatically on a daily basis and on ad-hoc runs (when needed).
• The CVE status must be aligned with VEX.
• The raw data must be exportable as CSV file.
• Ideally it will be written in Go or pure Shell script with basic HTML and no external dependencies in CSS or JS.

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Migrate from Docker to Podman by tjyrinki_suse

Description

I'd like to continue my former work on containerization of several domains on a single server by changing from Docker containers to Podman containers. That will need an OS upgrade as well as Podman is not available in that old server version.

Goals

• Update OS.
• Migrate from Docker to Podman.
• Keep everything functional, including the existing "meanwhile done" additional Docker container that is actually being used already.
• Keep everything at least as secure as currently. One of the reasons of having the containers is to isolate risks related to services open to public Internet.
• Try to enable the Podman use in production.
• At minimum, learn about all of these topics.
• Optionally, improve Ansible side of things as well...

Resources

A search engine is one's friend. Migrating from Docker to Podman, and from docker-compose to podman-compose.

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