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Re: immutable etc.

To: Andi Kleen <ak@xxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: immutable etc.
From: Christoph Hellwig <hch@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2000 19:32:29 +0100
Cc: Timothy Shimmin <tes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, graichen@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, linux-xfs@xxxxxxxxxxx
In-reply-to: <20001207191927.A31785@gruyere.muc.suse.de>; from ak@suse.de on Thu, Dec 07, 2000 at 07:19:27PM +0100
References: <news2mail-90gun7$srf$2@mate.bln.innominate.de> <200012070625.RAA34103@boing.melbourne.sgi.com> <20001207093517.A5515@caldera.de> <20001207163711.A27514@gruyere.muc.suse.de> <20001207191234.A30275@caldera.de> <20001207191927.A31785@gruyere.muc.suse.de>
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On Thu, Dec 07, 2000 at 07:19:27PM +0100, Andi Kleen wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 07, 2000 at 07:12:34PM +0100, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> >   a) it's at least harder for the attacker
> >   b) for a even more secure system you will just disable that too
> > 
> > > (e.g. working IMMUTABLE normally implies non working x server).
> > 
> > No.
> 
> It does.  I recently did a study for the changes required for a secure
> (how to plug all holes that could be used to change kernel memory in a
> controlled environment), and the X server was one of the most prominent 
> (unless you go to unaccelerated X, which is not acceptable)  
> There were lots of others too. 

Yes.  But IMMUTABLE doesn't even work on device files (yet).
X will get offended once you will disable it's access to kernel memory, but
IMMUTABLE is currently not usable to do so.

> 
> > 
> > > Commonly accessed binaries like the ld.so can also be just modified in 
> > > core. 
> > 
> > Sure.  But you probably want to disable access to /dev/kmem, too
> 
> Disabling /dev/kmem and module loading is trivial. The problem when you 
> want to do a full job is auditing every weird ioctl and /proc function hiding 
> in some device driver if they do not allow to modify foreign memory for root. 
> A lot of them do. 

That's a really good idea.  Set up a mailinglist and I (and probably others) 
will
help you.

-- 
Whip me.  Beat me.  Make me maintain AIX.

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