Re: [PATCH 3/4] security: capabilities patch (version 0.4.4), part3/4: introduce new capabilities

[Joshua Brindle]

Casey Schaufler wrote:
> --- Joshua Brindle <method@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>   
> > > The first system I took through evaluation
> > > (that is, independent 3rd party analysis) stored
> > > security attributes in a file while the second
> > > and third systems attached the attributes
> > > directly (XFS). The 1st evaluation required
> > > 5 years, the 2nd 1 year. It is possible that
> > > I just got a lot smarter with age, but I
> > > ascribe a significant amount of the improvement
> > > to the direct association of the attributes
> > > to the file.
> > >       
> > Thats great but entirely irrelevant in this context.
> > The patch and caps 
> > in question are not attached to the file via some
> > externally observable 
> > property (eg., xattr) but instead are embedded in
> > the source code so 
> > that it can drop caps at certain points during the
> > execution or before 
> > executing another app, thus unanalyzable.
> >     
>
> Oh that. Sure, we used capability bracketing
> in the code, too. That makes it easy to
> determine when a capability is active. What,
> you don't think that it's possible to analyze
> source code? Of course it is. Refer to the
> evaluation reports if you don't believe me.
>
>   
When I see an analysis of every line of source code on an average Linux 
machine then I might believe you (if you'll grant that no software can 
ever be installed on it afterward without being analyzed) but until then 
I'll stick with a centralized policy. I doubt many others will be 
satisfied with that limitation.

Bracketing hardly makes it analyzable, how can you possibly know if the 
bracketing happened? You *believe* it will and therefore you say that 
the bracketed code is safe but in reality this is a discretionary 
mechanism and you have zero assurance that there is any security 
whatsoever, no thanks, I'll pass.
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