Thanks. This is a good answer to my concerns. The only remaining issue I have is how archeological or ported-from-other-operating systems products may achieve "unmoderated" or "moderated-appropriately" status under a restrictive module. Is there a standard way or must application designers write code to multiple situations? Sincerely, J. Melvin Jones |>------------------------------------------------------ || J. MELVIN JONES jmjonesat_private |>------------------------------------------------------ || Microcomputer Systems Consultant || Software Developer || Web Site Design, Hosting, and Administration || Network and Systems Administration |>------------------------------------------------------ || http://www.jmjones.com/ |>------------------------------------------------------ On Thu, 24 Jan 2002, Crispin Cowan wrote: > jmjonesat_private wrote: > > >Wouldn't it be useful for a userspace application that is > >setuid root to be able to bypass the module's checks. > >Isn't setuid ROOT generally assumed to be a "non-restricted" > >condition? > > > >How does the new paradigm change that, specifically, and > >why SHOULD it do that? > > > That is a policy that each module can determine. "setuid root" is an > attribute of a file. "uid" and "euid" are attributes of processes. The > module looks at the requestor (the process) and its attributes, and the > object (file, network, whatever) and its attributes, and decides to > grant or deny. Your module can do whatever it wants with that information. > > Meta-comment: no, I don't think this is a very good idea. Most of the > LSM projects that I understand go out of their way to NOT allow root > (especially setuid root) to bypass the mandatory security policies that > they are at such pains to put in place. > > 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 > > The Olympic Games: A Century of Corruption and Graft > > _______________________________________________ linux-security-module mailing list linux-security-moduleat_private http://mail.wirex.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-security-module
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