Re: Upstream first policy

From: Al Viro
Date: Mon Mar 08 2010 - 13:54:18 EST


On Mon, Mar 08, 2010 at 06:45:21PM +0000, Al Viro wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 08, 2010 at 10:08:31AM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
> > In other words: it really _does_ make more sense to say "this process has
> > rights to overwrite the path '/etc/passwd'" than it does to try to label
> > the file. The _fundamental_ rule is about the pathname. The labeling comes
> > about BECAUSE YOU USED A HAMMER FOR A SCREW.
> >
> > I really don't understand why some people are unable to admit this fact.
>
> Because you don't have to use that pathname to modify the bits returned
> by read() after open() on that pathname?
>
> I'm not fond of selinux, to put it mildly, but "pathname-based" stuff simply
> doesn't match how the pathname resolution is defined on Unix...

PS: at that point the *only* things I care about wrt "security" junk are
* it shouldn't create new assertions to keep for VFS and fs code
* it shouldn't break the normal Unix permissions for boxen that
sanely have all that crap disabled
* it shouldn't make one vomit just from RTFS
* it shouldn't create obvious rootholes when enabled
* it shouldn't add overhead from hell
* it shouldn't try to hide the violations of the conditions above

My opinion of the "security community" is worse than yours, BTW. You have
decided that to let their stuff in; IMO it had been a mistake from the very
beginning, but that's your tree.
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