a13xp0p0v / kernel-hardening-checker

A tool for checking the security hardening options of the Linux kernel

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Evaluate performance penalty of the recommended kernel options

a13xp0p0v opened this issue · comments

As the first step, @BlackIkeEagle made some performance tests and described the results in this article.

Create a solution for automating this process:

  1. Take defconfig as a basic kernel configuration.
  2. Build the Linux kernel.
  3. Start test system with this kernel (a hardware machine may give more consistent results than a virtual machine). If the system doesn't boot, go to step 6.
  4. Run the chosen performance tests (hackbench, kernel compilation, network throughput evaluation, etc).
  5. Save the test results.
  6. Set another kernel option from the kconfig-hardened-check json output and go to step 2 (see #67). If all recommendations are already tested, then proceed to step 7.
  7. Analyze the results of the performance testing.

That approach would save us from plenty of boring manual routine.

Similar performance testing of a group of security hardening options may give interesting results as well.