Linux Security Summit North America 2018
2018-08-27..2018-08-28
Vancouver, Canada
[Linux Security Summit North America 2018, Linux Security Summit North America 2019, Linux Security Summit North America 2020, Linux Security Summit North America 2022, Linux Security Summit North America 2023, Linux Security Summit North America 2024, Linux Security Summit North America 2025, Linux Security Summit North America 2026]
who it's for
kernel developers, kernel subsystem maintainers, security researchers, embedded systems developers, firmware engineers, platform engineers, distribution maintainers
topics
variable length array removal; stackleak stack erasure; syzbot fuzzing with KASAN; fs-verity per-file Merkle trees; TPM2 software stack; Azure Sphere microcontroller Linux; SELinux access controls for eBPF; landlock programmatic sandboxing; protected execution facility; open RISC-V security CPU; u-root in Go initramfs; Trust Update for Linux Kernel (TUX)
| title | author | length |
|---|---|---|
| Making C Less Dangerous | Kees Cook | 34m |
Kernel C changes focus on concrete fixes: removing Variable Length Arrays reduces hundreds of patches to a few remaining and converts hot paths to fixed-size… | ||
| Security in Zephyr and Fuchsia | Stephen Smalley, James Carter | 46m |
Zephyr adds hardware-enforced memory protections (landed in 1.8/1.9) and kernel memory protection tests modeled on Linux KSPP that catch regressions; user… | ||
| Life Behind the Tinfoil: A Look at Qubes and Copperhead | Konstantin Ryabitsev | 45m |
Daily use report: QubesOS runs as a full daily workstation for years but demands 24 GB RAM (8+ will be painful), NVMe SSD, VT-x+VT-d CPU and many cores; it… | ||
| STACKLEAK: A Long Way to the Linux Kernel Mainline | Alexander Popov | 34m |
STACKLEAK erases kernel stack state at syscall exit and adds compile‑time instrumentation to stop three attack classes: information leaks, uninitialized-stack… | ||
| Syzbot and the Tale of Thousand Kernel Bugs | Dmitry Vyukov | 43m |
Automated fuzzing plus sanitizers already uncovers thousands of kernel bugs: syzbot/syzkaller with grammar-based syzkaller and KASAN/KMSAN/KTSAN reports… | ||
| Azure Sphere: Fitting Linux Security in 4 MiB of RAM | Ryan Fairfax | 41m |
Azure Sphere fits a customized Linux kernel into a microcontroller with a 4 MiB RAM target by using execute-in-place to keep code in flash, trimming configs… | ||
| The Future of Security is in Open Silicon | Joel Wittenauer | 45m |
An open RISC-V security CPU hosts a Zephyr-based root of trust that enforces three internal privilege levels, hardware-enforced permissions, and signed C… | ||
| Opening Remarks | James Morris | 02m |
Event opens by noting the eighth Linux Security Summit and a growing footprint with a new European event later this year, explains a room upgrade after running… | ||
| Sub-system Update: State of SELinux | Paul Moore | 09m |
SELinux marks 18 years and ships in mainline for 15+, Enterprise Linux for 13 years and on ~96% of current Android devices; this year merges include access… | ||
| fs-verity: Native File-based Authenticity | Michael Halcrow, Eric Biggers | 32m |
File-level authenticated hashing that behaves like DM-Verity but for individual read-only files: it appends a per-file Merkle tree plus a small descriptor to… | ||
| Sub-system Update: Kernel Self-Protection Project | Kees Cook | 11m |
Year-in-review of defenses landed across kernels 4.14–4.19: concrete features include vmapped stacks, fast refcount_t protection backported to 4.14, SLUB… | ||
| Open System Firmware Projects | Elaine Palmer | 44m |
Three open projects promise concrete changes: Linux in flash plus an initramfs called u-root in Go replaces hundreds of mysterious binary drivers (one demo… | ||
| Getting Started with the TPM2 Software Stack (TSS2) | Philip Tricca | 40m |
Project implements the TCG TSS2 APIs, ships a layered C stack with a low-level system API, a convenience ESYS layer and pluggable TCTI transport modules, plus… | ||
| Year in Review: Android Kernel Security | Jeff Vander Stoep, Sami Tolvanen | 32m |
Android kernel bugs account for roughly about a third of Android kernel bugs and attack surface reduction blocks roughly ~90% mitigated by access control for… | ||
| Updating Linux with TUX: Trust Update for Linux Kernel | Suhho Lee, Hyunik Kim | 31m |
TUX integrates Intel Open CIT, TPM 2.0, shim and GRUB to sign kernels with expected PCR values and push updated whitelists to the remote attestation server; a… | ||
| Project Cerberus | Bryan Kelly | 35m |
Project Cerberus is a microcontroller-based hardware root of trust that interposes between CPUs and SPI flash to enforce digital signatures, measured boot and… | ||
| Using the TPM NVRAM to Protect Secure Boot Keys in POWER9 OpenPOWER Systems | Claudio de Carvalho | 41m |
Uses TPM 2.0 NVRAM to protect OpenPOWER secure boot keys by storing a SHA‑512 integrity value and a platform root indicator rather than all certificates… | ||
| Sub-system Update: AppArmor Update 2018 | John Johansen | 09m |
Project migrates from Launchpad/MediaWiki to GitLab, earns a CII badge, and ships concrete kernel work: base socket mediation (4.17), support for secids and an… | ||
| Linux Audit: Moving Beyond Kernel Namespaces to Audit Container IDs | Richard Guy Briggs | 37m |
Kernel lacks a container concept so audit moves from namespace guessing to a concrete au64 container ID stored per task via a new /proc/<pid>/container_id… | ||
| How to Safely Restrict Access to Files in a Programmatic Way with Landlock? | Mickaël Salaün | 36m |
Landlock adds a user-space, unprivileged MAC that identifies files by inode via an eBPF inode map (filled from file descriptors) so sandboxed processes can… | ||
| Sub-system Update: Linux Integrity Status Update | Mimi Zohar | 16m |
EVM now uses the file hash as a portable identifier so EVM portable signature binds metadata to file data and supports larger digests for stronger algorithms… | ||
| Proactive Software Defense against Side Channel Attacks | Kristen Accardi | 30m |
Small team (about 2.5 people) presents concrete kernel defenses: a researched design to relink kernel each boot by relocating .o sections at boot to raise… | ||
| Security Module Stacks that Don't Fall Over | Casey Schaufler | 30m |
Kernel supports LSM stacking (since 4.18) by changing how per-object security blob memory is allocated centrally so multiple modules can keep state, and by… | ||
| Protected Execution Facility | Guerney D. H. Hunt | 42m |
Describes a hardware extension to Power that creates Protected Execution Facility memory regions plus an accompanying firmware called the Protected Execution… | ||
| Sub-system Update: Smack Update 2018 | Casey Schaufler | 08m |
Smack is shipping in recent Samsung TVs, Tizen devices and automotive distributions including Toyota and integrates with Yocto builds; this year it gains… | ||
| Extending OpenPOWER Boot Security to Guests | George Wilson | 20m |
Proposal to extend OpenPOWER secure boot into guests focuses on concrete compatibility steps: reuse host signature formats, verify guest kernels with a… | ||
| A Canonical Event Log Structure for IMA | David Safford, Monty Wiseman | 41m |
Proposes a canonical TLV event-log that adds sequence-numbered TLV records and TCG algorithm agility so PCR banks (e.g., PCR 10) and multiple hashes coexist… | ||
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