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SubjectRe: [linux-fbdev] fbdev 2.4.0 cleanups
Date
James A Simmons writes:
> > But anyway, i don't agree with you, there is no reason that a lots of people
> > can open /dev/fb in read only mode, sure if some guys want to write to it at
> > the same time, it could cause problems, ...
>
> Security :) One of the goals is to allow anyone to run a app on /dev/fb.
> No more root.

Erm, this is probably a silly question, especially as I haven't been following
this thread in depth.

If you're concerned about security, then you don't really want anyone to be
able to open /dev/fb and read what you've got on your console. Think about
it - allowing anyone to open /dev/fb means that you might as well broadcast
the picture that is on your monitor to everyone who has access to your
machine.

I think think what you really want is to allow the user logged into the
console to be able to read/write the framebuffer, in much the same way that
/dev/console, /dev/dsp and friends are handled in a RedHat system - the
ownership of these "console" based devices is changed when a user logs in
at the console.

Alternatively, the only other solution is to keep /dev/fb as "root only" and
have a suid program (tsk tsk) which drops it's privs directly after opening
/dev/fb. This allows "root" to control who can access /dev/fb.

Both of the above methods have their drawbacks in that neither of them can
be 100% secure when you may have multiple users logging in on the VCs, but
then that in itself is inherently insecure way of operating. ;)
_____
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| | Russell King rmk@arm.linux.org.uk --- ---
| | | | http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/~rmk/aboutme.html / / |
| +-+-+ --- -+-
/ | THE developer of ARM Linux |+| /|\
/ | | | --- |
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