linux-kernel - Re: Relax permissions for reading hard drive serial number?

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Message-ID: <3ae72650711290939w4fee581fm6f0d65a33abf1b82@mail.gmail.com>
Date:	Thu, 29 Nov 2007 18:39:21 +0100
From:	"Kay Sievers" <kay.sievers@...y.org>
To:	"Dan Kegel" <dank@...el.com>
Cc:	"Xavier Bestel" <xavier.bestel@...e.fr>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Relax permissions for reading hard drive serial number?

On Nov 29, 2007 4:46 PM, Dan Kegel <dank@...el.com> wrote:
> On Nov 29, 2007 7:37 AM, Xavier Bestel <xavier.bestel@...e.fr> wrote:
> > > One sticking point is that apps like Photoshop and probably
> > > Punkbuster want to retrieve the hard drive's serial number
> >
> > So they can't be installed on a network drive ?
>
> I think Adobe supports that, though perhaps not with the
> retail version.  Big companies with network drives are
> probably an important revenue source for them.
>
> I haven't looked closely at what happens when you try installing
> onto network drives.  If you are really interested, it's pretty easy to
> try yourself; just run the app under wine with
> WINEDEBUG=+cdrom,+disk and look in the log for calls like
> CreateFile("\\\\.\\PhysicalDrive0", ...).
> There's some chance the code always checks drive 0 instead
> of the drive you're installing onto.

There are people who, for privacy reasons, really don't like that "unique"
unchangeable serial numbers can be retrieved by untrusted users.

You should probably chmod the file on the users system, if he is fine with
that, but not change the kernel default.

Kay
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