Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 21 May 1998 19:49:37 +0200 (MET DST) | From | Rik van Riel <> | Subject | Re: PATCH: signals security |
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On Thu, 21 May 1998, Alexander Kjeldaas wrote:
> > You are probably better off using some of the code in > > my Out-Of-Memory killer. It checks: > > - whether the x86 I/O bitmap has been set up > > - whether the process has raw I/O capability (CAP_RAW_IO) > > > > Now we probably want to modify the ioperm() and iopl() > > syscalls to set CAP_RAW_IO, so we can do an easy arch > > independant check. > > I'm not sure I understand. Capabilities shouldn't just be set. We > already have the PF_SUPERPRIV flag which is set whenever a process > _uses_ root privileges. It would be more natural to define a PF_RAWIO > flag similar to PF_SUPERPRIV (or if needed, a complete set of 'have > used CAP_xxx' flags).
This would indeed be the 'perfect' solution. At each place where we check for a certain capability, we set the 'used' flag too.
if (has_cap && set_used_cap) { ... };
This allows for easy checking where we need it, and we can simply set up a clean map on fork().
It can also be used to gather statistics, so we can put out nice figures saying how many capabilities that are set remain unused.
This will undoubtedly keep security buffs on their toes and warn the autors of daemons that they can drop more capabilities on startup so they will be less and less of a security hazard.
The technical value of such stats might be small, but in the long run they might be the perfect thing...
Rik. +-------------------------------------------+--------------------------+ | Linux: - LinuxHQ MM-patches page | Scouting webmaster | | - kswapd ask-him & complain-to guy | Vries cubscout leader | | http://www.phys.uu.nl/~riel/ | <H.H.vanRiel@phys.uu.nl> | +-------------------------------------------+--------------------------+
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