init: /protocol replaces the ServiceId registry

A protocol is reached by name now, not by a compile-time integer. Init is
PID 1 and already knows which binary it started, so init serves /protocol
as a vfs backend: bind claims a contract with the provider's endpoint
attached, open answers with that endpoint as the reply's capability, and
readdir lists what is bound with the task and binary behind it. The kernel
reserves the prefix — nothing may mount over it, under it, or unmount it —
and ServiceId, ipc_register and ipc_lookup are gone, their syscall numbers
left vacant.

A bind is authorized by who the caller *is*: the kernel-stamped binary
together with the supervising task's identity, matched against
/system/configuration/protocol.csv. Identity, not spelling — spawn is
ungated, so an attacker can run any bundled binary, and a name-only rule
would have let it launder grants through an init of its own making. A name
a live process holds is refused to everyone else; a dead one's is released.

Three review rounds against a hostile ring-3 process found what 108 green
tests could not, because the suite contains no attacker. Publishing init's
supervision endpoint as the registry put PID 1's mailbox in every process's
hands, where two forged bytes reached the shutdown path: privileged traffic
is now believed only from the task that holds the contract it speaks for.
A capability arriving on a request outlived every path that ignored it,
one handle per call until the table was full — in init, and in the harness
ten services share — so the arriving capability is owned by the turn and
released unless a handler says otherwise. And the kernel let anyone holding
an endpoint handle aim signals, timers, exit notices and interrupts at it:
binding now requires having created it.

Suite 108/108. The new protocol-registry case asserts eleven properties,
each one an attack that must fail.
This commit is contained in:
Daniel Samson
2026-08-01 02:39:07 +01:00
parent 1ff0991452
commit 1379b699f3
66 changed files with 2191 additions and 392 deletions
+25 -3
View File
@@ -114,9 +114,10 @@ unforgeable source addressing, a property a network's source field lacks.
The bootstrap problem — how a channel is first established — is the subject of
[protocol-namespace.md](../os-development/protocol-namespace.md): a protocol is
resolved by name and the channel arrives as a capability. (The mechanism this
replaces, `ipc_register`/`ipc_lookup` under compile-time `ServiceId` integers,
is retired by that design.)
resolved by name and the channel arrives as a capability. (The mechanism it
replaced — `ipc_register`/`ipc_lookup` under compile-time `ServiceId` integers —
is gone: both syscalls and the enum were deleted when the registry landed, and
their syscall numbers are left vacant.)
### Interrupts are signals
@@ -169,6 +170,27 @@ signal mechanism:
- **One-shot timers** (`timer_bind`, `time.timerOnce`) land as a
timer-bit signal — the timed wait: a service arms a deadline and keeps
serving, instead of blocking in sleep.
- **Kernel notifications go only to your own endpoint.** `signal_bind`,
`timer_bind`, `process_subscribe`, `irq_bind`, `msi_bind`, and spawn's exit
endpoint all *nominate where the kernel will speak*, and all of them refuse an
endpoint the caller did not create (`-EPERM`; the check is `ipc.ownedBy`,
normalized to the process, so any thread may nominate an endpoint a sibling
created). Holding a handle is not enough, because holding a handle is cheap:
`fs_resolve` installs a mounted backend's capability in *any* caller's table,
so every process holds a handle to PID 1's mailbox. Without the rule, "bind
init's endpoint, then signal yourself" is a genuine, kernel-stamped `terminate`
badge in PID 1's queue — a shutdown a receiver has no way to disbelieve — and
timers, which carry no identity at all, multiply any loop that re-arms on its
own landing.
- **A capability that arrives belongs to the turn.** The kernel installs a sent
capability in the receiver's table whatever the message's length or kind, so a
receive loop must dispose of one on *every* path — the ping, the notification,
the malformed request. The service harness (`service.run`) and PID 1 both hold
it in an `ipc.Arrival`, released by a `defer`, and a handler that means to keep
it says `take()`: forgetting closes, keeping is explicit. The reverse
arrangement leaks a handle-table slot per request, and thirty-two unauthorized
zero-length pings then end a service's ability to accept any capability —
no subscribe, no shared-memory handover — for the rest of the boot.
- **The universal ping**: a **zero-length request is the liveness probe**,
answered with a zero-length reply by the service harness itself
(`service.run`). No protocol's requests start at length zero, so the