Re: thoughts on kernel security issues

[Valdis . Kletnieks]

On Tue, 25 Jan 2005 14:56:13 EST, John Richard Moser said:

> This puts pressure on the attacker; he has to find a bug, write an
> exploit, and find an opportunity to use it before a patch is written and
> applied to fix the exploit.  If say 80% of exploits are suddenly
> non-exploitable, then he's left with mostly very short windows that are
> far and few, and thus may be beyond his level of UNION(task->skill,
> task->luck) in many cases.

Correct.


> If you can circumvent protection A by simply using attack B* to disable
> protection A to do more interesting attack A*, then protection A is
> smoke and mirrors. 

You however missed an important case here.  If attack B is outside 
UNTION(task->skill,  task->luck) protection A is *NOT* smoke-and-mirrors.

And for the *vast* majority of attackers, if they have a canned exploit for
A and it doesn't work, they'll be stuck because B is outside their ability.

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