Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 17 Dec 2004 20:18:15 +0100 | From | Tomas Carnecky <> | Subject | Re: [Coverity] Untrusted user data in kernel |
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linux-os wrote: > On Fri, 17 Dec 2004, Bill Davidsen wrote: > >> James Morris wrote: >> >>> On Fri, 17 Dec 2004, Patrick McHardy wrote: >>> >>> That's what I meant, you need the capability to do anything bad :-) >> >> >> Are you saying that processes with capability don't make mistakes? >> This isn't a bug related to untrusted users doing privileged >> operations, it's a case of using unchecked user data. >> > > But isn't there always the possibility of "unchecked user data"? > I can, as root, do `cp /dev/zero /dev/mem` and have the most > spectacular crask you've evet seen. I can even make my file- > systems unrecoverable. >
But the difference between you example (cp /dev/zero /dev/mem) and passing unchecked data to the kernel is... you _can_ check the data and do something about it if you discover that the data is not valid/within a range/whatever even if the user has full permissions. No same person would do a 'cp /dev/zero /dev/mem', but passing bad data is more likely to happen, badly written userspace configuration tools etc.
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