lkml.org 
[lkml]   [1998]   [Apr]   [3]   [last100]   RSS Feed
Views: [wrap][no wrap]   [headers]  [forward] 
 
Messages in this thread
/
Date
From
SubjectLinux-privs

On Sun, 29 Mar 1998, Alan Cox wrote:

> This is capabilities, this is NOT what BSD securelevels are. There was
> a Linux capabilities project. It never got merged, it died AFAIK.

well, judging from lurking on their list and checking out patches
casually, it got completed to quite a level. suser() got extended in a way
to check for priviledge(s) required by the local kernel context. They also
got it fairly close to TrustedSolaris. The funny thing is that with their
scheme, a has_cap(CAP_RAWDISK) is about 3 lightweight assembly
instructions, about the same as you get from the broken BSD 'if
(securelevel > 0)' approach. [a has_cap(CAP_RAWDISK) expands to something
like a 'if (current->capmask & CAP_RAWDISK)']. And if you consider that
suser() is removed _completely_ [from that source point, it's still there
for migration reasons], it's even a speedup ...

The capabilities patch was quite migration-friendly last i checked, they
also fully contentrated on getting the 'full root'->'finegrained
capabilities' transition as smooth as possible [by allowing a 'mixed mode'
security setup, where part of the system uses capabilities, and part of
the system still uses the 'legacy' root capability. Setuid root basically
means a fully-ones capability mask at exec() time.]

So it was really low-impact and nicely designed, i think Theodore T'so has
had the plan to merge it? There was a patch against a 2.1.5x-ish kernel
some time ago. I'm quite sure he has not forgot about that patch.

the capabilities patch needs about as much care and knowledge to integrate
as a securelevel approach, but it's inherently more flexible. (what does
it mean anyway to have secure 'levels'? what do we level there, security
is not quite a thing that is a relation, IMHO it's rather a set of
'possibilities', with no particular connections between these
'possibilities'). I think there is no need to blindly follow the
military's rigid command hierarchy in Linux. (this is where that 'level'
stuff came from originally). I even dare to say that the capabilities
approach is much more intuitive than a suser()+securelevel approach, from
the maintainance point of view.

-- mingo


-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu

\
 
 \ /
  Last update: 2005-03-22 13:42    [W:0.127 / U:0.340 seconds]
©2003-2020 Jasper Spaans|hosted at Digital Ocean and TransIP|Read the blog|Advertise on this site