Messages in this thread | | | Date | Mon, 02 Feb 2015 11:00:18 -0800 | From | Casey Schaufler <> | Subject | Re: [capabilities] Allow normal inheritance for a configurable set of capabilities |
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On 2/2/2015 10:08 AM, Serge Hallyn wrote: > Quoting Casey Schaufler (casey@schaufler-ca.com): >> I'm game to participate in such an effort. The POSIX scheme >> is workable, but given that it's 20 years old and hasn't >> developed real traction it's hard to call it successful. > Over the years we've several times discussed possible reasons for this > and how to help. I personally think it's two things: 1. lack of > toolchain and fs support. The fact that we cannot to this day enable > ping using capabilities by default because of cpio, tar and non-xattr > filesystems is disheartening. 2. It's hard for users and applications > to know what caps they need. yes the API is a bear to use, but we can > hide that behind fancier libraries. But using capabilities requires too > much in-depth knowledge of precisely what caps you might need for > whatever operations library may now do when you asked for something.
The fix for that is to a change to the audit system. If the audit system reported the capabilities relevant to the decision you'd have what you need. If you failed because you didn't have CAP_CHMOD or you succeeded because you had CAP_SYS_ADMIN it should show up in the audit record. Other systems have used this approach.
You could, of course, create a separate capability result log, and I believe that Nokia had done something along those lines. I think that adding it to the audit trail is a more rational approach.
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