linux-kernel - Re: [patch 6/8] Factor out sysctl pathname code

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Date:	Tue, 03 Jun 2008 09:34:20 -0400
From:	Stephen Smalley <sds@...ho.nsa.gov>
To:	Christoph Hellwig <hch@...radead.org>
Cc:	Miklos Szeredi <miklos@...redi.hu>, linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org,
	viro@...IV.linux.org.uk, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	Andreas Gruenbacher <agruen@...e.de>,
	John Johansen <jjohansen@...e.de>,
	James Morris <jmorris@...ei.org>,
	Eric Paris <eparis@...isplace.org>
Subject: Re: [patch 6/8] Factor out sysctl pathname code


On Sat, 2008-05-31 at 04:27 -0400, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 01:32:51PM +0200, Miklos Szeredi wrote:
> > Convert the selinux sysctl pathname computation code into a standalone
> > function.
> 
> No point bloating core kernel for selinux mess.  And this whole routine
> should rather go away rather than moving it to core code.  While doing
> pathname based lookup for the label might work for the limited case
> of sysctl where there are no symlinks but is a rather dumb idea in
> general.  And reconstructing this path from the sysctl tables is twice
> as dumb.

I didn't see an alternative for fine-grained labeling of sysctl - the
pathname was the only stable key I could use as an index into policy;
xattrs or the like didn't make sense there.  And generating the pathname
from the sysctl tables ensured that we obtained a stable result that
wasn't mutable by userspace.  Do you have an alternative suggestion?

-- 
Stephen Smalley
National Security Agency

--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@...r.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/