Re: Security through Permissiveness: A Zen Riddle? (Crispin Cowan)

From: Crispin Cowan (crispinat_private)
Date: Wed Jul 18 2001 - 00:29:27 PDT

  • Next message: Crispin Cowan: "Re: Security through Permissiveness: A Zen Riddle? (Crispin Cowan)"

    jmjonesat_private wrote:
    
    > The advantages of chaining are obvious to everybody, I think.  The issue for
    > debate is how deeply it should be allowed.
    
    Agreed.  Some kind of chaining mechanism is likely to be necessary, even in
    state 1.
    
    
    > Permissiveness is a unique and complex problem... at least as HUGE as the
    > restrictiveness problem.
    
    Uh, no.  The applicability of permissiveness is considerably more limited than
    restrictiveness.
    
    
    > > In any case, I feel much more strongly that "finish stage 1" is high
    > > priority than I do about disputing which of audit or permissiveness is more
    > > important.  So lets go finish stage 1, and then worry about the other
    > > stuff.
    > Only one minor exception: lets *officially* REALIZE audit and permissive hooks
    > are coming and allow for them in the code.
    
    That's a pretty questionable proposition, depending on what "officially realize"
    means.  It is unclear that the mainstream kernel community will ever accept
    audit (I want them to, but I can't make them) and I personally am not convinced
    that permissive hooks should ever be a part of LSM.
    
    
    > A "dangling" pointer or two costs very little, but provides a place coders can
    > hang a function for test and evaluation without abandoning the interfacce.
    
    I am fully opposed to "recognition" that involves code compromises that serve no
    other purpose than to accomodate audit and permisiveness.  "Leave it to later
    stages" means "not in this patch", because including such compromises in the
    code risks the acceptability of stage 1.
    
    Crispin
    
    --
    Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
    Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc. http://wirex.com
    Security Hardened Linux Distribution:       http://immunix.org
    Available for purchase: http://wirex.com/Products/Immunix/purchase.html
    
    
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