Messages in this thread | | | From | "Khimenko Victor" <> | Date | Sun, 23 Jul 2000 14:31:56 +0400 (MSD) | Subject | Re: Does this help explain better?? ATA/IDE Thread |
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In <8ldooq$29g$1@cesium.transmeta.com> H. Peter Anvin (hpa@zytor.com) wrote: > Followup to: <Pine.LNX.4.10.10007212041090.15902-100000@master.linux-ide.org> > By author: Andre Hedrick <andre@linux-ide.org> > In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel >> >> Everyone >> >> I am talking about attempting to invoke unknown vender specific commands >> They do comply with the SPEC but are not part of the SPEC. >> Since I do not have the priviledge of knowing these facts, but know they >> exist. You can not allow a rouge driver attempt to invoke these commands. >>
> A rogue driver can always do this by writing straight to the > interface. I think a more serious issue is: what about a *buggy* > drivers? However, what I am a bit unclear of is the following: will > this patch prevent me from writing a driver which issues legitimate > vendor-specific commands to control vendor-specific aspects of a > particular piece of hardware?
This patch affects only some ioctls (there are some other fixes as weel, bit "shield" part of it is exactly that).
> If so, that would be a very bad thing. However, if this patch is there to > prevent buggy programs from issuing known-to-be-damaging commands by accient, > then that is a Good Thing[TM].
It's other way around: it's patch to allow ONLY know-to-be-good commands (like DISABLE_SEAGATE or EXABYTE_ENABLE_NEST) so equivalent command for WD will be rejected while DISABLE_SEAGATE can be sent even to IBM HDD.
> I personally would have to agree with the people that say this isn't a > security issue, but I *do* believe that protecting buggy programs (we > never have any of those, right?) from causing permanent damage to the > hardware is a very useful thing.
Not exactly. As Linus said it's a LOT of band-aids to avoid the "obvious" holes. You know where to find such stuff.
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