Re: [PATCH] capabilites, take 2

[Stephen Smalley]

On Fri, 2004-05-14 at 12:18, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
> Does this mean I should trash my 'maximum' mask?
> 
> (I like 'cap -c = sftp-server' so it can't try to run setuid/fP apps.)
> OTOH, since SELinux accomplishes this better, it may not be worth the
> effort.

Not my call to make, but I'm not sure it is worthwhile.  Even filesystem
capabilities are questionable IMHO, as you can already authorize
capabilities based on program and call chain (typically just the
immediate caller's domain, but potentially encoding the entire call
chain in the domain transition rules to track any untrusted components
in the call chain) today using SELinux TE.  Today, the program still has
to be setuid as well, as we currently check both ordinary Linux
capability and SELinux permission for each operation to be conservative,
but eventually we would hope to drop the use of the capability module as
a secondary module and let SELinux manage the privileges entirely (once
the TE policy configuration is fully locked down and userland is fully
aware of SELinux).

-- 
Stephen Smalley <sds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
National Security Agency

-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/