Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sun, 8 Oct 2000 01:55:41 -0700 (PDT) | From | Clayton Weaver <> | Subject | PID bit-width |
| |
Has everyone forgotten the old coda_fs-security discussion and the question of how to be sure that you are still talking to the original process on a system fast enough to wrap the pid counter in < 1 sec?
(That question doesn't have to be solved with the pid, you can use a wide cookie, but if coda can potentially have this problem, so can the kernel and network in other contexts.)
Sheesh, these things may need to become 64-bit as well as "random select next pid", just for security reasons, not because anyone is really running that many concurrent processes/kernel_threads.
More convenient user display formatting is far down the priority list here compared to security and uniquely identifying processes even in the context of an intelligent attack on fast hardware that may not even have been invented yet.
Convenience is good. Security is mission-critical.
Regards,
Clayton Weaver <mailto:cgweav@eskimo.com> (Seattle)
"Everybody's ignorant, just in different subjects." Will Rogers
- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
| |