My dissertation is available here. I plan to make a series of posts over the next few weeks documenting my findings in smaller snippets, particularly the experience of voiding mount namespaces. In the future, I hope to produce some work which increases the performance of creating empty namespaces."><metaname=authorcontent="Jake Hillion"><linkrel=canonicalhref=https://blog.hillion.co.uk/posts/void-processes/dissertation/><linkcrossorigin=anonymoushref=/assets/css/stylesheet.min.48a18943c2fc15c38a372b8dde1f5e5dc0bc64fa6cb90f5a817d2f8c76b7f3ae.cssintegrity="sha256-SKGJQ8L8FcOKNyuN3h9eXcC8ZPpsuQ9agX0vjHa3864="rel="preload stylesheet"as=style><scriptdefercrossorigin=anonymoussrc=/assets/js/highlight.min.b95bacdc39e37a332a9f883b1e78be4abc1fdca2bc1f2641f55e3cd3dabd4d61.jsintegrity="sha256-uVus3DnjejMqn4g7Hni+Srwf3KK8HyZB9V4809q9TWE="onload=hljs.initHighlightingOnLoad()></script>
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My dissertation is available here. I plan to make a series of posts over the next few weeks documenting my findings in smaller snippets, particularly the experience of voiding mount namespaces. In the future, I hope to produce some work which increases the performance of creating empty namespaces."><metaproperty="og:type"content="article"><metaproperty="og:url"content="https://blog.hillion.co.uk/posts/void-processes/dissertation/"><metaproperty="article:section"content="posts"><metaproperty="article:published_time"content="2022-06-06T14:00:00+01:00"><metaproperty="article:modified_time"content="2022-06-06T14:00:00+01:00"><metaproperty="og:site_name"content="Jake Hillion"><metaname=twitter:cardcontent="summary"><metaname=twitter:titlecontent="Void Processes: Minimising privilege by default"><metaname=twitter:descriptioncontent="RecentlyIconcludedtheworkonmyPartIII(M.Eng)dissertation.ThiswasonVoidProcesses,amechanismtostaticallydistributefine-grainedprivilegetoapplicationprocessesonLinux.
My dissertation is available here. I plan to make a series of posts over the next few weeks documenting my findings in smaller snippets, particularly the experience of voiding mount namespaces. In the future, I hope to produce some work which increases the performance of creating empty namespaces."><scripttype=application/ld+json>{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Posts","item":"https://blog.hillion.co.uk/posts/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Void Processes: Minimising privilege by default","item":"https://blog.hillion.co.uk/posts/void-processes/dissertation/"}]}</script><scripttype=application/ld+json>{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BlogPosting","headline":"Void Processes: Minimising privilege by default","name":"Void Processes: Minimising privilege by default","description":"Recently I concluded the work on my Part III (M.Eng) dissertation. This was on Void Processes, a mechanism to statically distribute fine-grained privilege to application processes on Linux.\nMy dissertation is available here. I plan to make a series of posts over the next few weeks documenting my findings in smaller snippets, particularly the experience of voiding mount namespaces. In the future, I hope to produce some work which increases the performance of creating empty namespaces.","keywords":[],"articleBody":"Recently I concluded the work on my Part III (M.Eng) dissertation. This was on Void Processes, a mechanism to statically distribute fine-grained privilege to application processes on Linux.\nMy dissertation is available here. I plan to make a series of posts over the next few weeks documenting my findings in smaller snippets, particularly the experience of voiding mount namespaces. In the future, I hope to produce some work which increases the performance of creating empty namespaces. This post will be updated as and when they become available.\nAbstract Void processes intend to make it easier for all developers to produce effectively privilege separated applications. The project has two primary goals: show the merits of starting from zero privilege, and provide the utilities to make this feasible for the average developer.\nBuilding void processes involves first reliably removing all privilege from a process then systematically adding back in what is required, and no more. This project utilises namespaces on Linux to revoke privilege from an application, showing how this can be done and why its easier in some domains than others. We then show how to inject sufficient privilege for applications to perform useful work, developing new APIs that are friendly for privilege separation. These elements compose a shim called the void orchestrator, a framework for restricting Linux processes.\nTwo example applications are presented to demonstrate the utility of a shim helping with privilege separation. The startup performance is negatively affected by the design of the kernel, and future work is proposed to aid this. After the delay in startup, applications developed within this framework are shown to be highly performant.\nComputer Scientists need better tools to handle the continuing prevalence of vulnerabilities in computer software. Starting from nothing is a new approach to privilege separation on Linux that has noticeable benefits. Linux should focus on reducing namespace creation latency however they can, and beginning from nothing is a good way to achieve that.\nDissertation PDF\n","wordCount":"325","inLanguage":"en","datePublished":"2022-06-06T14:00:00+01:00","dateModified":"2022-06-06T14:00:00+01:00","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Jake Hillion"},"mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://blog.hillion.co.uk/posts/void-processes/dissertation/"},"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Jake Hillion","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://blog.hillion.co.uk/favicon.ico"}}}</script></head><bodyid=top><script>localStorage.getItem("pref-theme")==="dark"?document.body.classList.add("dark"):localStorage.getItem("pref
<spanclass=logo-switches><buttonid=theme-toggleaccesskey=ttitle="(Alt + T)"><svgid="moon"xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"width="24"height="24"viewBox="0 0 24 24"fill="none"stroke="currentcolor"stroke-width="2"stroke-linecap="round"stroke-linejoin="round"><pathd="M21 12.79A9 9 0 1111.21 3 7 7 0 0021 12.79z"/></svg><svgid="sun"xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"width="24"height="24"viewBox="0 0 24 24"fill="none"stroke="currentcolor"stroke-width="2"stroke-linecap="round"stroke-linejoin="round"><circlecx="12"cy="12"r="5"/><linex1="12"y1="1"x2="12"y2="3"/><linex1="12"y1="21"x2="12"y2="23"/><linex1="4.22"y1="4.22"x2="5.64"y2="5.64"/><linex1="18.36"y1="18.36"x2="19.78"y2="19.78"/><linex1="1"y1="12"x2="3"y2="12"/><linex1="21"y1="12"x2="23"y2="12"/><linex1="4.22"y1="19.78"x2="5.64"y2="18.36"/><linex1="18.36"y1="5.64"x2="19.78"y2="4.22"/></svg></button></span></div><ulid=menu><li><ahref=https://blog.hillion.co.uk/categories/title=categories><span>categories</span></a></li><li><ahref=https://blog.hillion.co.uk/tags/title=tags><span>tags</span></a></li></ul></nav></header><mainclass=main><articleclass=post-single><headerclass=post-header><divclass=breadcrumbs><ahref=https://blog.hillion.co.uk/>Home</a> » <ahref=https://blog.hillion.co.uk/posts/>Posts</a></div><h1class=post-title>Void Processes: Minimising privilege by default</h1><divclass=post-meta><spantitle='2022-06-06 14:00:00 +0100 +0100'>June 6, 2022</span> · 2 min · Jake Hillion</div></header><divclass=post-content><p>Recently I concluded the work on my Part III (M.Eng) dissertation. This was on Void Processes, a mechanism to statically distribute fine-grained privilege to application processes on Linux.</p><p>My dissertation is available <ahref=jsh77-dissertation.pdf>here</a>. I plan to make a series of posts over the next few weeks documenting my findings in smaller snippets, particularly the experience of voiding mount namespaces. In the future, I hope to produce some work which increases the performance of creating empty namespaces. This post will be updated as and when they become available.</p><h3id=abstract>Abstract<ahiddenclass=anchoraria-hidden=truehref=#abstract>#</a></h3><p>Void processes intend to make it easier for all developers to produce effectively privilege separated applications. The project has two primary goals: show the merits of starting from zero privilege, and provide the utilities to make this feasible for the average developer.</p><p>Building void processes involves first reliably removing all privilege from a process then systematically adding back in what is required, and no more. This project utilises namespaces on Linux to revoke privilege from an application, showing how this can be done and why its easier in some domains than others. We then show how to inject sufficient privilege for applications to perform useful work, developing new APIs that are friendly for privilege separation. These elements compose a shim called the void orchestrator, a framework for restricting Linux processes.</p><p>Two example applications are presented to demonstrate the utility of a shim helping with privilege separation. The startup performance is negatively affected by the design of the kernel, and future work is proposed to aid this. After the delay in startup, applications developed within this framework are shown to be highly performant.</p><p>Computer Scientists need better tools to handle the continuing prevalence of vulnerabilities in computer software. Starting from nothing is a new approach to privilege separation on Linux that has noticeable benefits. Linux should focus on reducing namespace creation latency however they can, and beginning from nothing is a good way to achieve that.</p><p><ahref=jsh77-dissertation.pdf>Dissertation PDF</a></p></div><footerclass=post-footer><navclass=paginav><aclass=nexthref=https://blog.hillion.co.uk/posts/weekly-05-02/><spanclass=title>Next Page »</span><br><span>Jake's Weekly - 2nd May 2022</span><
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