Several things to make virtualbox more secure.

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jifjiwheiwhw2hg2
Posts: 2
Joined: 17. Jun 2016, 16:23

Several things to make virtualbox more secure.

Post by jifjiwheiwhw2hg2 »

Hi. I suggest that Virtualbox can be compiled with PIE(Position independent executable), SSP(Stack smashing protection), RELRO, BIND_NOW to make it harder to exploit even if there is 0-day vulnerability. Google Chrome on Linux and Vmware Player has enforced these protections already.
klaus
Oracle Corporation
Posts: 1139
Joined: 10. May 2007, 14:57

Re: Several things to make virtualbox more secure.

Post by klaus »

Feel free (not only you, everyone is welcome!) to contribute. PIE already should work (disabling in the few places where it can't work).

Oh, and where's the evidence that VMware Player is using all the preventive security measures you're listing? Just curious.
jifjiwheiwhw2hg2
Posts: 2
Joined: 17. Jun 2016, 16:23

Re: Several things to make virtualbox more secure.

Post by jifjiwheiwhw2hg2 »

klaus wrote:Feel free (not only you, everyone is welcome!) to contribute. PIE already should work (disabling in the few places where it can't work).

Oh, and where's the evidence that VMware Player is using all the preventive security measures you're listing? Just curious.
I'm going to install a VMM on my hardened gentoo but I afraid a VMM without these security measures will ruin my system because there will be several processes with root permission and kernel modules. So I downloaded Virtualbox and Vmware Player and checked binaries in them by checksec (It can be downloaded from github: slimm609/checksec.sh) I checked vmware's installer and checksec said:

Code: Select all

         COMMAND    PID RELRO           STACK CANARY            SECCOMP          NX/PaX        PIE                     FORTIFY
            vmis-launcher  13704 Full RELRO      Canary found            No Seccomp       PaX enabled   PIE enabled             Yes
Haven't checked other binaries because there're many problems to install and get Vmware Player working on my Pax/GrSecurity kernel. So I turned to Virtualbox and checksec said:

Code: Select all

RELRO           STACK CANARY      NX            PIE             RPATH      RUNPATH      FORTIFY Fortified Fortifiable  FILE
Partial RELRO   No canary found   NX enabled    No PIE          No RPATH   No RUNPATH   No      0               5       VirtualBox
Partial RELRO   No canary found   NX enabled    No PIE          No RPATH   No RUNPATH   No      0               5       VBoxNetNAT
Partial RELRO   No canary found   NX enabled    No PIE          RPATH      No RUNPATH   No      0               13      VBoxSVC
VirtualBox is an executable with suid permission...
I know it's difficult to enforce all these measures because it's VMM. What I want to convey is that Vmware and Google has already adjusted their toolchains and we can do it too.
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