Linux Security and Isolation APIs course outline

1. Course Introduction
2. Security and Isolation APIs Overview (*)
   • Sandboxing
   • Containers
3. Classical privileged Programs
   • A simple set-user-ID program
   • Saved set-user-ID and saved set-group-ID
   • Changing process credentials
   • A few guidelines for writing privileged programs
4. Capabilities
   • Process and file capabilities
   • Permitted and effective capabilities
   • Setting and viewing file capabilities
   • Capabilities-dumb and capabilities-aware applications
   • Text form capabilities
   • Capabilities and execve()
   • The capability bounding set
   • Inheritable capabilities
   • Ambient capabilities
   • Capabilities and UID transitions
   • Summary remarks
5. Capabilities: Further Topics
   • Capabilities, UID 0, and execve()
   • Making a capabilities-only environment: securebits (*)
   • Programming with capabilities (*)
6. Namespaces
   • An example: UTS namespaces
   • Namespaces commands
   • Namespaces demonstration (UTS namespaces)
   • Namespace types and APIS
   • Namespaces, containers, and virtualization
7. Mount Namespaces and Shared Subtrees
   • Mount namespaces
   • Shared subtrees
   • Bind mounts
8. PID Namespaces
   • PID namespaces
9. Other Namespaces
   • IPC namespaces
   • Time namespaces
   • Cgroup namespaces
   • Network namespaces
10. Namespaces APIs
    • API Overview
    • Creating a child process in new namespaces: clone()
    • /proc/PID/ns
    • Entering a namespace: setns()
    • Creating a namespace: unshare()
    • PID namespaces idiosyncrasies
    • Namespace lifetime (*)
11. User Namespaces
    • Overview of user namespaces
    • Creating and joining a user namespace
    • User namespaces: UID and GID mappings
    • User namespaces, execve(), and user ID 0
    • Accessing files; file-related capabilities (*)
    • Security issues
    • Use cases
    • Combining user namespaces with other namespaces
12. User Namespaces and Capabilities
    • User namespaces and capabilities
    • What does it mean to be superuser in a namespace?
    • Discovering namespace relationships
    • User namespace "set-UID-root" programs (*)
    • Namespaced file capabilities (*)
13. Mount Namespaces: Further Details (*)
    • Peer groups
    • Private mounts
    • Slave mounts
    • Unbindable mounts
    • Mounting a container filesystem
14. Seccomp
    • Introduction and history
    • Seccomp filtering and BPF
    • The BPF virtual machine and BPF instructions
    • BPF filter return values
    • BPF programs
    • Checking the architecture
    • Productivity aids (libseccomp and other tools)
    • Applications and further information
    • Other filter return actions (*)
15. Seccomp: Further Details (*)
    • Caveats
    • Discovering the system calls made by a program
    • Further details on seccomp filters
    • Extended BPF (eBPF)
    • Further details on BPF programs
    • Recent seccomp features
    • Audit logging of filter actions
16. Cgroups: Introduction
    • Preamble
    • What are control groups?
    • An example: the pids controller
    • Creating and destroying cgroups
    • Populating a cgroup
    • Enabling and disabling controllers
17. Cgroups: A Survey of the Controllers
    • The cpu, memory, freezer, and pids controllers
    • Other controllers
18. Cgroups: Advanced Features
    • Cgroup namespaces
    • Release notification (cgroup.events file)
    • Delegation
19. Cgroups: Thread Mode (*)
    • Overview of thread mode
    • Creating and using a threaded subtree
20. Cgroups Version 1 (*)
    • Cgroups v1: hierarchies and controllers
    • Cgroups v1: populating a cgroup
    • Cgroups v1: release notification
    • Cgroups v1: delegation
    • Problems with cgroups v1; rationale for v2

(*) Topics marked with an asterisk may be covered, if time permits.

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