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SubjectRe: [patch 2.1.97] more capabilities support
Andrew Morgan wrote:
> > I think that is terribly wrong.
> >
> > 1. overflow stack
> > 2. run code to enable super power <-- duh
> > 3. run code to do bad stuff
>
> OK, bad example. :*]
>
> The real problem here is that it is hard to defend against poorly
> written code that requires privilege. The benefit from capabilities
> over the setuid case is that you can limit the damage...

Actually, it's very easy. Just don't give it more authority than it
needs. If you give the program only one direction where it can shoot at,
it doesn't matter that much anymore if the code is right or wrong from
the security perspective, because the program can't shoot anywhere else
than in that one direction anyway. The only thing that it can do then is
shoot a faulty bullet that won't reach the target (or will blow up the
gun, killing the shooter, which is a good thing because it will point
out the bug so that it can be fixed).

Andrej

--
Andrej Presern, andrejp@luz.fe.uni-lj.si



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