From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Sep 18 05:35:06 2004 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 5DC3116A4CE for ; Sat, 18 Sep 2004 05:35:06 +0000 (GMT) Received: from delight.idiom.com (delight.idiom.com [216.240.32.16]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 278A143D45 for ; Sat, 18 Sep 2004 05:35:06 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from mwm-dated-1096348930.0b5064@mired.org) Received: from idiom.com (idiom.com [216.240.32.1]) by delight.idiom.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 09DA512A668 for ; Fri, 17 Sep 2004 22:35:06 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mired.org (mwm@idiom [216.240.32.1]) by idiom.com (8.12.11/8.12.11) with SMTP id i8I5MBwt063741 for ; Fri, 17 Sep 2004 22:22:11 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mwm-dated-1096348930.0b5064@mired.org) Received: (qmail 31829 invoked by uid 100); 18 Sep 2004 05:22:10 -0000 Received: by guru.mired.org (tmda-sendmail, from uid 100); Sat, 18 Sep 2004 00:22:09 -0500 (CDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <16715.50688.830652.474272@guru.mired.org> Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2004 00:22:08 -0500 To: "Matt Emmerton" In-Reply-To: <001801c49d38$1c8cb790$1200a8c0@gsicomp.on.ca> References: <4146316C000077FD@ims3a.cp.tin.it> <20040916235936.GO23987@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk> <20040918025217.GB54961@silverwraith.com> <20040918030531.GA23987@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk> <001801c49d38$1c8cb790$1200a8c0@gsicomp.on.ca> X-Mailer: VM 7.17 under 21.1 (patch 14) "Cuyahoga Valley" XEmacs Lucid X-Primary-Address: mwm@mired.org X-face: "5Mnwy%?j>IIV\)A=):rjWL~NB2aH[}Yq8Z=u~vJ`"(,&SiLvbbz2W`; h9L,Yg`+vb1>RG% *h+%X^n0EZd>TM8_IB;a8F?(Fb"lw'IgCoyM.[Lg#r\ X-Delivery-Agent: TMDA/1.0.3 (Seattle Slew) From: Mike Meyer X-Mailman-Approved-At: Sat, 18 Sep 2004 15:39:16 +0000 cc: viro@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk cc: gerarra@tin.it cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD Kernel buffer overflow 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: Sat, 18 Sep 2004 05:35:06 -0000 In <001801c49d38$1c8cb790$1200a8c0@gsicomp.on.ca>, Matt Emmerton typed: > I disagree. It really comes down to how secure you want FreeBSD to be, and > the attitude of "we don't need to protect against this case because anyone > who does this is asking for trouble anyway" is one of the main reason why > security holes exist in products today. (Someone else had brought this up > much earlier on in the thread.) You haven't been paying close enough attention to the discussion. To exploit this "security problem" you have to be root. If it's an external attacker, you're already owned. That leaves trojans. Those are always a problem for OSS - and for proprietary software. With OSS, you have the option of auditing the code yourself, though that has been beaten (by Ritchie, I believe *). Personally, I trust the FreeBSD committers to not trojan my system - and if they were going to, there are *so* many easier ways to do it. Should I ever decide to run a third party kernel module, I may well audit the code for that module. But I take that risk everytime I install software - whether it's from ports, commercial, or just grabbed off the web. http://www.mired.org/consulting.html Independent Network/Unix/Perforce consultant, email for more information.