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Date:      Thu, 21 Aug 2003 01:58:54 -0500
From:      Dan Nelson <dnelson@allantgroup.com>
To:        ari <edelkind-freebsd-hackers@episec.com>
Cc:        freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: [future patch] dropping user privileges on demand
Message-ID:  <20030821065854.GA11586@dan.emsphone.com>
In-Reply-To: <20030817181315.GL55671@episec.com>
References:  <20030817181315.GL55671@episec.com>

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In the last episode (Aug 17), ari said:
> Currently, root is the only user that can actually drop significant
> privileges, as root is the only user that has access to such
> functions. This is flawed --- any user should be able to relinquish
> his privileges, and i've begun a patch to put this into effect.

Have you taken a look at Cerb?  http://cerber.sourceforge.net/

It does something similar, but uses a C-like language to control a
processes actions.  This lets you get extremely fine-grained control
(allow httpd to bind to only port 80, once), but the rules run as
"root", so they can grant as well as revoke privileges.  A useful
modification would be to allow users to submit their own policies that
can only disallow actions (i.e. all arguments and process variables are
read-only, and the script can either pass the syscall through or return
a failure code, nothing else).

-- 
	Dan Nelson
	dnelson@allantgroup.com



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