From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Aug 21 14:11:30 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C572416A4BF for ; Thu, 21 Aug 2003 14:11:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from episec.com (episec.com [198.78.65.141]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 306E143F85 for ; Thu, 21 Aug 2003 14:11:30 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from edelkind-freebsd-hackers@episec.com) Received: (qmail 83543 invoked by uid 1024); 21 Aug 2003 21:09:58 -0000 Date: Thu, 21 Aug 2003 17:09:58 -0400 From: ari To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, flowpriv@episec.com Message-ID: <20030821210958.GC55671@episec.com> Mail-Followup-To: ari , freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, flowpriv@episec.com References: <20030817181315.GL55671@episec.com> <20030821065854.GA11586@dan.emsphone.com> <20030821125028.GY55671@episec.com> <20030821162156.GL47959@garage.freebsd.pl> <20030821170915.GZ55671@episec.com> <20030821204403.GN47959@garage.freebsd.pl> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20030821204403.GN47959@garage.freebsd.pl> Subject: Re: [future patch] dropping user privileges on demand X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 21 Aug 2003 21:11:31 -0000 nick@garage.freebsd.pl said this stuff: > As I said. Stuff like systrace or cerb doesn't need to be standarized, > because it is transparent for applications. It doesn't need any work from > userland application programmer. That's why it is easy to addopt for > non-BSD-licensed applications or even for non-open-source applications. This is precisely why i began working on the project. What's transparent to applications is not transparent to administrators. So instead of having one programmer (or even a group of programmers) "fix" the code, you have every administrator correct for it. Of course, it would be best if every administrator verified that it acted properly anyway, but that's simply not going to happen. Sure, some programmers are lazy. Some programmers don't care. But some will benefit, and that's what matters. This isn't intended to solve all the world's coding problems. It will probably never be used by as many programmers as systrace will by administrators. It's just furthering the unix mentality of shedding privileges, without granting additional ones. You seem to think that the idea is a security hack. It isn't. It's more of a security model. ari