Support a linux security module
Either grsecurity or apparmor I guess, not selinux.
👍 👍 👍
Especially running on cloud, this could be a really nice feature, and an additional carrot to using the OS.
I have been talking to @ncopa today about grsecurity as he is in Cambridge. There are some issues, eg aufs support is a problem, but it is definitely an attractive option.
Given the recent meltdown grsecurity had on Twitter and elsewhere (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/27/linux_security_bug_report_row/), I am a bit hesitant on grsecurity from a "social" perspective (and the likelihood of it getting actually upstreamed into the kernel seems low based on what I'm gathering, which is really unfortunate). However, it seems to really have a lot to offer from a technical perspective, so it's certainly worth a look, and upstream Alpine clearly favors it.
I'd be curious what @nicolaka @huslage @metcalfc are seeing and hearing from customers in terms of what they want, or what they think they want, in this regard. I rarely heard grsecurity specifically mentioned in my time as an SE, but granted that was a while ago when people were just trying to figure out what the heck Docker even was.
Probably there's a sweet spot of customer security demand vs. the convenience tradeoffs of increased security we should be aiming for? If there's low-hanging fruit, maybe we can tackle that first, then move on to slightly more aggressive functionality.
Also, of course, would be great to get @diogomonica @NathanMcCauley 2c, since they are very good at evaluating these tradeoffs in my experience.
Another thing to consider, is if we might want to implement some kind of auto-updating kernel functionality like CoreOS does someday (Greg Kroah-Hartman argues for this here in discussing some 4.6 features, and grsecurity published a rebuttal -- they're both worth reading IMO). The "channels" idea seems like a perfect fit for this in some ways.
We could also consider having a build that boots with grsecurity enabled and one without, but usually stuff like that hasn't worked out well for me in the past (test matrix hell).
@justincormack any news on this? I'm specifically interested in apparmor support.
+1 to apparmor in the kernel.