Re: backward compat / access (was Re: Benchmarks)

From: richard offer (offerat_private)
Date: Thu Apr 19 2001 - 12:17:22 PDT

  • Next message: Crispin Cowan: "Re: Hook function suggestion"

    * $ from chrisat_private at "18-Apr: 5:25pm" | sed "1,$s/^/* /"
    *
    *
    * * Luc Pardon (lucpat_private) wrote:
    * >
    * >     An application developer may want to inform the user that (s)he
    * > doesn't have sufficient rights to do something, without actually attempt
    * > to do that "something" and set off all kinds of alarms. Sysadmins hate
    * > false alarms (rightly so), and tend to extend that feeling to the users
    * > that provoke them. Compare it to the "this program must be run as root"
    * > message that many utitities issue.
    *
    * No.
    * 1)  We have tons of "legacy code" to support (i.e. sendmail, postfix,
    * apache, bin-utils, etc).  It is not going to be re-written to make use of
    * these hooks.
    
    If the architecture works then applications are going to want to do something
    simmilar so that they don't have to take policy specfic changes into their code
    base.
    
    If I was the maintainer of id, would I want to add separate code to support
    SELinux, RSBAC, MLS etc ?
    
    id isn't so bad, but it would mean a policy specific binaries, but sendmail is
    big enough that it makes sense for it to be done once.
    
    If its not then nobody else gets to benefit from any work that I do in
    analysing it and adding MAC checks to it. And every policy writter ends up
    forking key applications that by their very nature are extremely security
    senstive.
    
    *
    * -chris
    
    richard.
    
    
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------
    Richard Offer                         Technical Lead, Trust Technology.
    "Specialization is for insects"
    __________________________________________http://reality.sgi.com/offer/
    
    
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