Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sun, 10 Sep 2006 22:03:37 +0200 | From | David Madore <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH 3/4] security: capabilities patch (version 0.4.4), part 3/4: introduce new capabilities |
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On Sun, Sep 10, 2006 at 01:56:43PM -0400, Joshua Brindle wrote: > To expand on this a little, some of the capabilities you are looking to > add are of very little if any use without being able to specify objects. > For example, CAP_REG_OPEN is whether the process can open any file > instead of specific ones. How many applications open no files whatsoever > in practice? Even if there are some as soon as they change and need to > open a file they'll need this capability and will be able to open any. > CAP_REG_WRITE has the same problem. For a description of why > CAP_REG_EXEC is meaningless see the digsig thread on the LSM list from > earlier this year.
CAP_REG_OPEN and CAP_REG_EXEC might be useful only for demonstration purposes, but I've *often* wished I could run a program without CAP_REG_WRITE because I wasn't root and I wanted to make *sure* it didn't write any file anywhere. Instead I had to run them from a user-mode-linux, which is horribly messy and doesn't work well (and, at best, with a noticeable slowdown).
Again, I ask: is SElinux useable if you aren't root? (Assuming it's activated, of course: I mean, can you create new policies to make certain programs run with restricted privileges?) I thought it wasn't, but maybe I'm wrong.
-- David A. Madore (david.madore@ens.fr, http://www.madore.org/~david/ ) - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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