What is perl doing here?

[kushaldas]

Description

On a Xenial box with 1.8.0rc1, I can see this following grsec denial errors.

Feb 25 08:23:26 app-prod kernel: [  361.202196] grsec: From 10.0.1.53: denied write to CPU MSR by /usr/bin/perl[perl:2898] uid/euid:0/0 gid/egid:0/0, parent /
bin/dash[sh:2748] uid/euid:0/0 gid/egid:0/0
Feb 25 08:23:26 app-prod kernel: [  361.249944] grsec: From 10.0.1.53: denied write to CPU MSR by /usr/bin/perl[perl:2931] uid/euid:0/0 gid/egid:0/0, parent /
bin/dash[sh:2748] uid/euid:0/0 gid/egid:0/0

[emkll]

Thanks for opening @kushaldas. Do the timestamp coincide with running the spectre/meltdown checking script? A previous (related) issue opened on this topic: #5040

[conorsch]

To @emkll's point, sure looks like https://github.com/speed47/spectre-meltdown-checker/blob/08e30e156dab6d32a549aab83486920b4ad65970/spectre-meltdown-checker.sh#L2366

[kushaldas]

Thank you for the replies, I think I can close this now.