Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Sat, 18 Sep 1999 21:41:25 -0500
From:      Jacques Vidrine <n@nectar.com>
To:        Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com>
Cc:        security@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Real-time alarms 
Message-ID:  <19990919024125.817FCBD05@gw.nectar.com>
In-Reply-To: <37E4449B.ADDD68EE@softweyr.com> 
References:  <199909180612.AAA00597@harmony.village.org> <4.2.0.58.19990918093306.047917c0@localhost> <37E4449B.ADDD68EE@softweyr.com>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Here's a not-completely-thought-out idea.  When looking at PHK's 
changes to suser for the jail code, I realized that he had essentially
created two categories of suser calls in the kernel.  One category of
calls are allowed if you are NOT in a jail, and the other are allowed 
regardless of whether you are in a jail.

I wanted to extend this so that each call to suser passes a category,
kind of like we do with calls to malloc.  I wanted to do this for
two reasons:

  1) finer granularity of control on what superuser priviledges a
     jailed process can use (specified at jail creation time)
  2) auditing what superuser priviledges a process has used
     or tried to use

e.g.	SUSER_SIGNAL		sent signals to process we don't own
	SUSER_RESOURCE		changed our resource settings
	SUSER_KLD		did something with a KLD
	SUSER_REBOOT		rebooted the system
        SUSER_JAIL		made a new jail

etc.

These categories could be as broad or specific as needed, although
one per system call is probably too many :-)

So if I'm running some server application that needs lots of 
root priviledges, I don't have to give away the farm.[1]

Thoughts?

Jacques Vidrine / n@nectar.com / nectar@FreeBSD.org

[1] for those who haven't looked at the jail code:  it doesn't
    give away the farm, either.  but the priviledges that can
    be used by a jailed process are ``hard wired'' and can't 
    be customized.

On 18 September 1999 at 20:04, Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com> wrote:
> This is what we're talking about with the auditing facility.  There are
> a lot of architectural issues to be solved, starting with "what is an
> alarm" and ending with "how do I securely transmit the alarms to those
> who need to know about them"?
> 
> Fun stuff, eh?





To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-security" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?19990919024125.817FCBD05>