mbox series

[RFC,00/10] security: Introduce qemu_security_policy_taint() API

Message ID 20210908232024.2399215-1-philmd@redhat.com
Headers show
Series security: Introduce qemu_security_policy_taint() API | expand

Message

Philippe Mathieu-Daudé Sept. 8, 2021, 11:20 p.m. UTC
Hi,

This series is experimental! The goal is to better limit the
boundary of what code is considerated security critical, and
what is less critical (but still important!).

This approach was quickly discussed few months ago with Markus
then Daniel. Instead of classifying the code on a file path
basis (see [1]), we insert (runtime) hints into the code
(which survive code movement). Offending unsafe code can
taint the global security policy. By default this policy
is 'none': the current behavior. It can be changed on the
command line to 'warn' to display warnings, and to 'strict'
to prohibit QEMU running with a tainted policy.

As examples I started implementing unsafe code taint from
3 different pieces of code:
- accelerators (KVM and Xen in allow-list)
- block drivers (vvfat and parcial null-co in deny-list)
- qdev (hobbyist devices regularly hit by fuzzer)

I don't want the security researchers to not fuzz QEMU unsafe
areas, but I'd like to make it clearer what the community
priority is (currently 47 opened issues on [3]).

Regards,

Phil.

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/qemu-devel/20200714083631.888605-2-ppandit@redhat.com/
[2] https://www.qemu.org/contribute/security-process/
[3] https://gitlab.com/qemu-project/qemu/-/issues?label_name[]=Fuzzer

Philippe Mathieu-Daudé (10):
  sysemu: Introduce qemu_security_policy_taint() API
  accel: Use qemu_security_policy_taint(), mark KVM and Xen as safe
  block: Use qemu_security_policy_taint() API
  block/vvfat: Mark the driver as unsafe
  block/null: Mark 'read-zeroes=off' option as unsafe
  qdev: Use qemu_security_policy_taint() API
  hw/display: Mark ATI and Artist devices as unsafe
  hw/misc: Mark testdev devices as unsafe
  hw/net: Mark Tulip device as unsafe
  hw/sd: Mark sdhci-pci device as unsafe

 qapi/run-state.json        | 16 +++++++++
 include/block/block_int.h  |  6 +++-
 include/hw/qdev-core.h     |  6 ++++
 include/qemu-common.h      | 19 +++++++++++
 include/qemu/accel.h       |  5 +++
 accel/kvm/kvm-all.c        |  1 +
 accel/xen/xen-all.c        |  1 +
 block.c                    |  6 ++++
 block/null.c               |  8 +++++
 block/vvfat.c              |  6 ++++
 hw/core/qdev.c             | 11 ++++++
 hw/display/artist.c        |  1 +
 hw/display/ati.c           |  1 +
 hw/hyperv/hyperv_testdev.c |  1 +
 hw/misc/pc-testdev.c       |  1 +
 hw/misc/pci-testdev.c      |  1 +
 hw/net/tulip.c             |  1 +
 hw/sd/sdhci-pci.c          |  1 +
 softmmu/vl.c               | 70 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 qemu-options.hx            | 17 +++++++++
 20 files changed, 178 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

Comments

Daniel P. Berrangé Sept. 9, 2021, 10:28 a.m. UTC | #1
On Thu, Sep 09, 2021 at 01:20:14AM +0200, Philippe Mathieu-Daudé wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> This series is experimental! The goal is to better limit the
> boundary of what code is considerated security critical, and
> what is less critical (but still important!).
> 
> This approach was quickly discussed few months ago with Markus
> then Daniel. Instead of classifying the code on a file path
> basis (see [1]), we insert (runtime) hints into the code
> (which survive code movement). Offending unsafe code can
> taint the global security policy. By default this policy
> is 'none': the current behavior. It can be changed on the
> command line to 'warn' to display warnings, and to 'strict'
> to prohibit QEMU running with a tainted policy.

Ok, so I infer that you based this idea on the "--compat-policy"
arg used to control behaviour wrt to deprecations.

With the deprecation support, the QAPI introspection data can
report deprecations for machines / CPUs (and in theory devices
later).  Libvirt records this deprecation info and can report
it to the user before even starting a guest, so they can avoid
using a deprecated device in the first place.  We also use this
info to mark a guest as tainted + deprecation at the libvirt
level and let mgmt apps query this status.

The --compat-policy support has been integrated into libvirt
but it is not something we expect real world deployments to
use - rather it is targeted as a testing framework.

Essentially I see the security reporting as needing to operate
in a pretty similar manner.

IOW, the reporting via QAPI introspetion is much more important
for libvirt and mgmt apps, than any custom cli arg / printfs
at the QEMU level.


In terms of QAPI design we currently have

   'deprecated': 'bool'

field against MachineInfo and CpuDefinitionInfo types.

it feels like we need

   'secure': 'bool'

field against the relevant types here too, though I think
maybe we might need to make it an optional field  to let
us distinguish lack of information, since it will take a
long time to annotate all areas. eg

   '*secure': 'bool'

 - not set  => no info available on security characteristics
 - true => device is considered secure wrt malicious guest
 - false => device is not considered secure wrt malicious guest


> As examples I started implementing unsafe code taint from
> 3 different pieces of code:
> - accelerators (KVM and Xen in allow-list)
> - block drivers (vvfat and parcial null-co in deny-list)
> - qdev (hobbyist devices regularly hit by fuzzer)
> 
> I don't want the security researchers to not fuzz QEMU unsafe
> areas, but I'd like to make it clearer what the community
> priority is (currently 47 opened issues on [3]).

Regards,
Daniel
Alexander Bulekov Sept. 9, 2021, 12:03 p.m. UTC | #2
On 210909 0120, Philippe Mathieu-Daudé wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> This series is experimental! The goal is to better limit the
> boundary of what code is considerated security critical, and
> what is less critical (but still important!).
> 
> This approach was quickly discussed few months ago with Markus
> then Daniel. Instead of classifying the code on a file path
> basis (see [1]), we insert (runtime) hints into the code
> (which survive code movement). Offending unsafe code can
> taint the global security policy. By default this policy
> is 'none': the current behavior. It can be changed on the
> command line to 'warn' to display warnings, and to 'strict'
> to prohibit QEMU running with a tainted policy.
> 
> As examples I started implementing unsafe code taint from
> 3 different pieces of code:
> - accelerators (KVM and Xen in allow-list)
> - block drivers (vvfat and parcial null-co in deny-list)
> - qdev (hobbyist devices regularly hit by fuzzer)

Just looking through the list of hci, storage, network and graphics
devices available on i386 to see which others are potential good
candidates for this tag. Obviously a lot of guesswork here:

USB devices:
name "ich9-usb-ehci1", bus PCI
name "ich9-usb-ehci2", bus PCI
name "ich9-usb-uhci1", bus PCI
name "ich9-usb-uhci2", bus PCI
name "ich9-usb-uhci3", bus PCI
name "ich9-usb-uhci4", bus PCI
name "ich9-usb-uhci5", bus PCI
name "ich9-usb-uhci6", bus PCI
name "nec-usb-xhci", bus PCI
name "pci-ohci", bus PCI, desc "Apple USB Controller"
name "piix3-usb-uhci", bus PCI
name "piix4-usb-uhci", bus PCI
name "qemu-xhci", bus PCI
name "usb-ehci", bus PCI

Not sure about these. Maybe ohci isn't sensitive?

Storage devices:
=== Sensitive ===
name "floppy", bus floppy-bus, desc "virtual floppy drive"
name "ide-cd", bus IDE, desc "virtual IDE CD-ROM"
name "ide-hd", bus IDE, desc "virtual IDE disk"
name "isa-fdc", bus ISA, desc "virtual floppy controller"
name "isa-ide", bus ISA
name "piix3-ide", bus PCI
name "piix3-ide-xen", bus PCI
name "piix4-ide", bus PCI
name "scsi-block", bus SCSI, desc "SCSI block device passthrough"
name "scsi-cd", bus SCSI, desc "virtual SCSI CD-ROM"
name "scsi-generic", bus SCSI, desc "pass through generic scsi device (/dev/sg*)"
name "scsi-hd", bus SCSI, desc "virtual SCSI disk"
name "vhost-scsi", bus virtio-bus
name "vhost-scsi-pci", bus PCI
name "vhost-scsi-pci-non-transitional", bus PCI
name "vhost-scsi-pci-transitional", bus PCI
name "vhost-user-blk", bus virtio-bus
name "vhost-user-blk-pci", bus PCI
name "vhost-user-blk-pci-non-transitional", bus PCI
name "vhost-user-blk-pci-transitional", bus PCI
name "vhost-user-fs-device", bus virtio-bus
name "vhost-user-fs-pci", bus PCI
name "vhost-user-scsi", bus virtio-bus
name "vhost-user-scsi-pci", bus PCI
name "vhost-user-scsi-pci-non-transitional", bus PCI
name "vhost-user-scsi-pci-transitional", bus PCI
name "virtio-9p-device", bus virtio-bus
name "virtio-9p-pci", bus PCI, alias "virtio-9p"
name "virtio-9p-pci-non-transitional", bus PCI
name "virtio-9p-pci-transitional", bus PCI
name "virtio-blk-device", bus virtio-bus
name "virtio-blk-pci", bus PCI, alias "virtio-blk"
name "virtio-blk-pci-non-transitional", bus PCI
name "virtio-blk-pci-transitional", bus PCI
name "virtio-pmem", bus virtio-bus
name "virtio-scsi-device", bus virtio-bus
name "virtio-scsi-pci", bus PCI, alias "virtio-scsi"
name "virtio-scsi-pci-non-transitional", bus PCI
name "virtio-scsi-pci-transitional", bus PCI

=== Tainting/Not Sensitive ===
name "am53c974", bus PCI, desc "AMD Am53c974 PCscsi-PCI SCSI adapter"
name "dc390", bus PCI, desc "Tekram DC-390 SCSI adapter"
name "ich9-ahci", bus PCI, alias "ahci"
name "lsi53c810", bus PCI
name "lsi53c895a", bus PCI, alias "lsi"
name "megasas", bus PCI, desc "LSI MegaRAID SAS 1078"
name "megasas-gen2", bus PCI, desc "LSI MegaRAID SAS 2108"
name "mptsas1068", bus PCI, desc "LSI SAS 1068"
name "nvdimm", desc "DIMM memory module"
name "nvme", bus PCI, desc "Non-Volatile Memory Express"
name "nvme-ns", bus nvme-bus, desc "Virtual NVMe namespace"
name "nvme-subsys", desc "Virtual NVMe subsystem"
name "pvscsi", bus PCI
name "sd-card", bus sd-bus
name "sdhci-pci", bus PCI
name "usb-bot", bus usb-bus
name "usb-mtp", bus usb-bus, desc "USB Media Transfer Protocol device"
name "usb-storage", bus usb-bus
name "usb-uas", bus usb-bus

Network devices:
=== Sensitive ===
name "e1000", bus PCI, alias "e1000-82540em", desc "Intel Gigabit Ethernet"
name "e1000e", bus PCI, desc "Intel 82574L GbE Controller"
name "virtio-net-device", bus virtio-bus
name "virtio-net-pci", bus PCI, alias "virtio-net"
name "virtio-net-pci-non-transitional", bus PCI
name "virtio-net-pci-transitional", bus PCI

=== Tainting/Not Sensitive ===
name "e1000-82544gc", bus PCI, desc "Intel Gigabit Ethernet"
name "e1000-82545em", bus PCI, desc "Intel Gigabit Ethernet"
name "i82550", bus PCI, desc "Intel i82550 Ethernet"
name "i82551", bus PCI, desc "Intel i82551 Ethernet"
name "i82557a", bus PCI, desc "Intel i82557A Ethernet"
name "i82557b", bus PCI, desc "Intel i82557B Ethernet"
name "i82557c", bus PCI, desc "Intel i82557C Ethernet"
name "i82558a", bus PCI, desc "Intel i82558A Ethernet"
name "i82558b", bus PCI, desc "Intel i82558B Ethernet"
name "i82559a", bus PCI, desc "Intel i82559A Ethernet"
name "i82559b", bus PCI, desc "Intel i82559B Ethernet"
name "i82559c", bus PCI, desc "Intel i82559C Ethernet"
name "i82559er", bus PCI, desc "Intel i82559ER Ethernet"
name "i82562", bus PCI, desc "Intel i82562 Ethernet"
name "i82801", bus PCI, desc "Intel i82801 Ethernet"
name "ne2k_isa", bus ISA
name "ne2k_pci", bus PCI
name "pcnet", bus PCI
name "rocker", bus PCI, desc "Rocker Switch"
name "rtl8139", bus PCI
name "tulip", bus PCI
name "usb-net", bus usb-bus
name "vmxnet3", bus PCI, desc "VMWare Paravirtualized Ethernet v3"

Display devices:
=== Sensitive ===
name "isa-vga", bus ISA
name "qxl", bus PCI, desc "Spice QXL GPU (secondary)"
name "qxl-vga", bus PCI, desc "Spice QXL GPU (primary, vga compatible)"
name "vhost-user-gpu", bus virtio-bus
name "vhost-user-gpu-pci", bus PCI
name "vhost-user-vga", bus PCI
name "virtio-gpu-device", bus virtio-bus
name "virtio-gpu-pci", bus PCI, alias "virtio-gpu"
name "virtio-vga", bus PCI
name "VGA", bus PCI

=== Tainting/Not Sensitive ===
name "ati-vga", bus PCI
name "bochs-display", bus PCI
name "cirrus-vga", bus PCI, desc "Cirrus CLGD 54xx VGA"
name "isa-cirrus-vga", bus ISA
name "ramfb", bus System, desc "ram framebuffer standalone device"
name "secondary-vga", bus PCI
name "sga", bus ISA, desc "Serial Graphics Adapter"
name "vmware-svga", bus PCI

Sound devices:
=== Sensitive ===
name "hda-duplex", bus HDA, desc "HDA Audio Codec, duplex (line-out, line-in)"
name "hda-micro", bus HDA, desc "HDA Audio Codec, duplex (speaker, microphone)"
name "hda-output", bus HDA, desc "HDA Audio Codec, output-only (line-out)"
name "ich9-intel-hda", bus PCI, desc "Intel HD Audio Controller (ich9)"

=== Tainting/Not Sensitive ===
name "AC97", bus PCI, alias "ac97", desc "Intel 82801AA AC97 Audio"
name "adlib", bus ISA, desc "Yamaha YM3812 (OPL2)"
name "cs4231a", bus ISA, desc "Crystal Semiconductor CS4231A"
name "ES1370", bus PCI, alias "es1370", desc "ENSONIQ AudioPCI ES1370"
name "gus", bus ISA, desc "Gravis Ultrasound GF1"
name "intel-hda", bus PCI, desc "Intel HD Audio Controller (ich6)"
name "sb16", bus ISA, desc "Creative Sound Blaster 16"
name "usb-audio", bus usb-bus
Prasad Pandit Sept. 14, 2021, 1:30 p.m. UTC | #3
Hello Philippe, all

>On Thursday, 9 September, 2021, 03:58:40 pm IST, Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange@redhat.com> wrote:
>On Thu, Sep 09, 2021 at 01:20:14AM +0200, Philippe Mathieu-Daudé wrote:
>> This series is experimental! The goal is to better limit the
>> boundary of what code is considerated security critical, and
>> what is less critical (but still important!).
>>
>> This approach was quickly discussed few months ago with Markus
>> then Daniel. Instead of classifying the code on a file path
>> basis (see [1]), we insert (runtime) hints into the code
>> (which survive code movement). Offending unsafe code can
>> taint the global security policy. By default this policy
>> is 'none': the current behavior. It can be changed on the
>> command line to 'warn' to display warnings, and to 'strict'
>> to prohibit QEMU running with a tainted policy.
>

* Thanks so much for restarting this thread. I've been at it intermittently last few
  months, thinking about how could we annotate the source/module objects.

   -> [*] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2020-07/msg04642.html

* Last time we discussed about having both compile and run time options for users
  to be able to select the qualified objects/backends/devices as desired.

* To confirm: How/Where is the security policy defined? Is it device/module specific OR QEMU project wide?

> IOW, the reporting via QAPI introspetion is much more important
> for libvirt and mgmt apps, than any custom cli arg / printfs
> at the QEMU level.
>

* True, while it makes sense to have a solution that is conversant with
  the management/libvirt layers, It'll be great if we could address qemu/cli
  other use cases too.

>it feels like we need
>  'secure': 'bool'

* Though we started the (above [*]) discussion with '--security' option in mind,
  I wonder if 'secure' annotation is much specific. And if we could widen its scope.
--- x ---


Source annotations: I've been thinking over following approaches
===================

1) Segregate the QEMU sources under

      ../staging/      <= devel/experimental, not for production usage
      ../src/          <= good for production usage, hence security relevant
      ../deprecated/   <= Bad for production usage, not security relevant 

   - This is similar to Linux staging drivers' tree.
   - Staging drivers are not considered for production usage and hence CVE allocation.
   - At build time by default we only build sources under ../src/ tree.
   - But we can still have options to build /staging/ and /deprecated/ trees.  
   - It's readily understandable to end users.

2) pkgconfig(1) way:
   - If we could define per device/backend a configuration (.pc) file which is then used
     at build/run time to decide which sources are suitable for the build or usage.

   - I'm trying to experiment with this.

3) We annotate QEMU devices/backends/modules with macros which define its status.
   It can then be used at build/run times to decide if it's suitable for usage.
   For ex:

    $ cat annotsrc.h

    #include <inttypes.h>

    enum SRCSTATUS {
        DEVEL = 0,
        STAGING,
        PRODUCTION,
        DEPRECATED
    };

    uint8_t get_src_status(void);
    ===

    $ cat libx.c

    #include <annotsrc.h>

    #define SRC_STATUS DEPRECATED

    uint8_t
    get_src_status(void)
    {
        return SRC_STATUS;
    }
    ===

    $ cat testlibx.c

    #include <stdio.h>
    #include <annotsrc.h>

    int
    main (int argc, char *argv[])
    {
        printf("LibX status: %d\n", get_src_status());
        return 0;
    }
--- x ---



* Approach 3) above is similar to the _security_policy_taint() API,
  but works at the source/object file level, rather than specific 'struct type' field.
  

* Does adding a field to struct type (ex. DeviceClass) scale to all objects/modules/backends etc?
  Does it have any limitations to include/cover other sources/objects?


* I'd really appreciate any feedback/inputs/suggestions you may have.


Thank you.
---
  -P J P
http://feedmug.com
Prasad Pandit Sept. 28, 2021, 11:39 a.m. UTC | #4
On Tuesday, 14 September, 2021, 07:00:27 pm IST, P J P <pjp@fedoraproject.org> wrote:
>* Thanks so much for restarting this thread. I've been at it intermittently last few
> months, thinking about how could we annotate the source/module objects.
>
> -> [*] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2020-07/msg04642.html
>
>* Last time we discussed about having both compile and run time options for users
> to be able to select the qualified objects/backends/devices as desired.
>
>* To confirm: How/Where is the security policy defined? Is it device/module specific OR QEMU project wide?
>
>>> it feels like we need
>> 'secure': 'bool'
>
>* Though we started the (above [*]) discussion with '--security' option in mind,
>  I wonder if 'secure' annotation is much specific. And if we could widen its scope.
>
>
>Source annotations: I've been thinking over following approaches
>===================
>
>1) Segregate the QEMU sources under
>
>  ../staging/ <= devel/experimental, not for production usage
>  ../src/ <= good for production usage, hence security relevant
>  ../deprecated/ <= Bad for production usage, not security relevant
>
>  - This is similar to Linux staging drivers' tree.
>  - Staging drivers are not considered for production usage and hence CVE allocation.
>  - At build time by default we only build sources under ../src/ tree.
>  - But we can still have options to build /staging/ and /deprecated/ trees.
>  - It's readily understandable to end users.
>
>2) pkgconfig(1) way:
>  - If we could define per device/backend a configuration (.pc) file which is then used
>  at build/run time to decide which sources are suitable for the build or usage.
>
>  - I'm trying to experiment with this.
>
>3) We annotate QEMU devices/backends/modules with macros which define its status.
>  It can then be used at build/run times to decide if it's suitable for usage.
>  For ex:
>
>  $ cat annotsrc.h
>
>  #include <inttypes.h>
>
>  enum SRCSTATUS {
>  DEVEL = 0,
>  STAGING,
>  PRODUCTION,
>  DEPRECATED
>  };
>
...
>
>
>* Approach 3) above is similar to the _security_policy_taint() API,
>  but works at the source/object file level, rather than specific 'struct type' field.

>* Does adding a field to struct type (ex. DeviceClass) scale to all objects/modules/backends etc?
>  Does it have any limitations to include/cover other sources/objects?
>
>* I'd really appreciate your feedback/inputs/suggestions.


Ping...!?
---
  -P J P
http://feedmug.com
Daniel P. Berrangé Sept. 30, 2021, 10:30 a.m. UTC | #5
On Tue, Sep 14, 2021 at 01:30:27PM +0000, P J P wrote:
> Hello Philippe, all
> 
> >On Thursday, 9 September, 2021, 03:58:40 pm IST, Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange@redhat.com> wrote:
> >On Thu, Sep 09, 2021 at 01:20:14AM +0200, Philippe Mathieu-Daudé wrote:
> >> This series is experimental! The goal is to better limit the
> >> boundary of what code is considerated security critical, and
> >> what is less critical (but still important!).
> >>
> >> This approach was quickly discussed few months ago with Markus
> >> then Daniel. Instead of classifying the code on a file path
> >> basis (see [1]), we insert (runtime) hints into the code
> >> (which survive code movement). Offending unsafe code can
> >> taint the global security policy. By default this policy
> >> is 'none': the current behavior. It can be changed on the
> >> command line to 'warn' to display warnings, and to 'strict'
> >> to prohibit QEMU running with a tainted policy.
> >
> 
> * Thanks so much for restarting this thread. I've been at it intermittently last few
>   months, thinking about how could we annotate the source/module objects.
> 
>    -> [*] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2020-07/msg04642.html
> 
> * Last time we discussed about having both compile and run time options for users
>   to be able to select the qualified objects/backends/devices as desired.

Right, we have multiple different use cases here

 - People building QEMU who want to cut down what they ship to
   minimize the stuff they support, which is outside the security
   guarantee. This can be OS distros, but also any other consumer
   of QEMU
   
   eg. RHEL wants to cut out almost all non-virtualization stuff.
   There is a quirk here though, that RHEL still includes TCG
   which is considered outside the security guarantee. So a
   simple build time "--secure on|off" doesn't do the job on
   its own.

   We need something to let people understand the consequences
   of the build options they are enabling.

   NB, when I talk of build options, I include both configure/meson
   args, and also the CONFIG_* options set in configs/**/*.mak


 - Application developers want to check that they're not using
   stuff outside the security guarantee, even if the distro
   has enable it.  These need to be able to query whether the
   VM they've launched has undesirable configuration choices.


Some people fall into both groups, some people fall into neither
group.


> * To confirm: How/Where is the security policy defined? Is it
>   device/module specific OR QEMU project wide?

Currently our only definition is in the docs

  https://qemu-project.gitlab.io/qemu/system/security.html#security-requirements

Philippe's patch is proposing tagging against internal QEMU objects
of various types.  I further proposed that we expose this in QMP
so it is introspectable.

I think there's scope for doing stuff at build time with configure
args and *mak CONFIG_* options, but haven't thought what that might
look like.

> > IOW, the reporting via QAPI introspetion is much more important
> > for libvirt and mgmt apps, than any custom cli arg / printfs
> > at the QEMU level.
> >
> 
> * True, while it makes sense to have a solution that is conversant with
>   the management/libvirt layers, It'll be great if we could address qemu/cli
>   other use cases too.
> 
> >it feels like we need
> >  'secure': 'bool'
> 
> * Though we started the (above [*]) discussion with '--security' option in mind,
>   I wonder if 'secure' annotation is much specific. And if we could widen its scope.
> --- x ---
> 
> 
> Source annotations: I've been thinking over following approaches
> ===================
> 
> 1) Segregate the QEMU sources under
> 
>       ../staging/      <= devel/experimental, not for production usage
>       ../src/          <= good for production usage, hence security relevant
>       ../deprecated/   <= Bad for production usage, not security relevant 
> 
>    - This is similar to Linux staging drivers' tree.
>    - Staging drivers are not considered for production usage and hence CVE allocation.
>    - At build time by default we only build sources under ../src/ tree.
>    - But we can still have options to build /staging/ and /deprecated/ trees.  
>    - It's readily understandable to end users.

I don't think we should be working in terms of source files at all.
Some files contain multiple distinct bits of functionality that are
not easily separated, and will have distinct security levels. Also
IMHO it is unpleasant to be moving files around in git to when code
switches between levels.  Also there are distinct criteria here,
both security levels, and support levels - there can be stuff which
is fully supported but considered insecure, and stuff that is
deprecated but considered secure. 

> 2) pkgconfig(1) way:
>    - If we could define per device/backend a configuration (.pc) file which is then used
>      at build/run time to decide which sources are suitable for the build or usage.
> 
>    - I'm trying to experiment with this.

For build time configuration, we have a pretty clear set of
toggles between the configure/meson options, and the CONFIG_*
make options.  I don't think we need to complicate things by
trying to add pkg-config into the mix here.

> 3) We annotate QEMU devices/backends/modules with macros which define its status.
>    It can then be used at build/run times to decide if it's suitable for usage.

What is what Philippe's patches are doing in essence

Regards,
Daniel