Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 14:34:09 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> To: jkh@time.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard) Cc: julian@ref.tfs.com, terry@lambert.org, KentH@HNS.St-Louis.Mo.US, current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FS PATCHES: THE NEXT GENERATION Message-ID: <199602112134.OAA18761@phaeton.artisoft.com> In-Reply-To: <29631.824002635@time.cdrom.com> from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at Feb 10, 96 05:37:15 pm
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> > I put it to you that security of devices is such an important thing > > that you don't want persistance of device ownerships > > I put it to you that security of devices is such an important thing > that you definitely want persistance of device ownerships. You two are using "persistance" differently. Julian wants assurance that settings made by an administrator that are different from distribution defaults are affixed to the devices on a permanent basis. Julian worries that a simple rc/rc.shutdown mechanism will cause a hackers changes to persist across boots. Jordan wants assurance that the familiar mechanisms an administrator currently uses will continue to work, in order to grandfather older administrative frameworks that might have already been built up over time by existing installations. Jordan does not take note of the fact that the system cannot distinguish between an administrative change and a change by a hacker who has gained administrative level priviledges. In such a situation, user level security is no security. I would prefer that the allowable changes to a device be on a per device basis, with administrative template override, either programatically or by way of an annoying-because-it-is-not-chmod-or-chown user interface that must only ever be used once (or once per site policy change, not a frequent occurance). In large part, I agree with Julian; I only disagree on implementation details. Since both Julian and I don't have code for our proposals, out differences are moot. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.
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