Messages in this thread | | | From | Kyle Moffett <> | Subject | Re: PATCH: cdrecord: avoiding scsi device numbering for ide devices | Date | Fri, 20 Aug 2004 18:05:35 -0400 |
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On Aug 20, 2004, at 09:41, Joerg Schilling wrote: >> While Sun did spend a year refusing to fix security holes I found - >> for >> "compatibility reasons" - long ago back when I was a sysadmin at NTL, >> the Linux world does not work that way. > > Unless you tell us what kind of "security holes" you found _and_ when > this has > been, it looks like a meaningless remark.
Further discussion on such a topic is irrelevant. There is at least one case where a vendor has chosen compatibility over security (*cough* *cough* Windows *cough*). From the previous emails on the issue, the general opinion of most Linux developers is to choose security over compatibility, after all, with free software users are free to fix the bugs/incompatibilities themselves.
Security issue: Anybody with read access to certain block devices (Like CD-RW drives.) could reflash the firmware or otherwise turn the drive into a rather expensive doorstop.
Chosen solution for 2.6.8.1: Only allow certain known-safe commands, anything else needs root privileges, specifically CAP_SYS_RAWIO or CAP_SYS_ADMIN, (Seems sane, and follows with the general design of the rest of the kernel).
Problems with the solution: It breaks software, *whine*! Well, if Microsoft suddenly fixed all the remaining security flaws in its software, almost _all_ Windows software would break, because they depend on silly things like writable files on the root of the C drive. Just because software does something doesn't mean it's secure.
Personally, I'd rather have a setuid executable on my system than allow anybody in the cdwriters group to reflash my CDROM drive. For you there is a _really_ simple solution akin to the warning message that already exists in linuxcheck(), if the version is >= 2.6.8, just tell the user that it's unsupported and won't work without a patched kernel. That's a change that could even go in during a code freeze!
Cheers, Kyle Moffett
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