From owner-freebsd-advocacy Fri Mar 24 10:35:10 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from obie.softweyr.com (obie.softweyr.com [204.68.178.33]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 35ABB37BA55 for ; Fri, 24 Mar 2000 10:35:06 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from wes@softweyr.com) Received: from softweyr.com (Foolstrustidentd@obie.softweyr.com [204.68.178.33]) by obie.softweyr.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id LAA15398; Fri, 24 Mar 2000 11:34:38 -0700 (MST) (envelope-from wes@softweyr.com) Message-ID: <38DBB599.14C48CAC@softweyr.com> Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 11:36:09 -0700 From: Wes Peters Organization: Softweyr LLC X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en] (X11; U; FreeBSD 3.3-RELEASE i386) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Olaf Hoyer Cc: advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: New article References: <200003231326.IAA24776@blackhelicopters.org> <38DA7A60.B7C23121@newsguy.com> <38DA950C.D4DCE9CC@softweyr.com> <4.1.20000324022914.00cbed30@mail.rz.fh-wilhelmshaven.de> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Olaf Hoyer wrote: > > >> > Legacy hardware will still need to be hand configured (though not > >> > necessarily built in the kernel), and some kernel options are probably > >> > unavoidable. > >> > >> But could potentially be configured through a loader script, rather > >> than compiled into the kernel. > > Hi! > > Question: Is a loadable kernel module not a potential security risk? > > I mean, if some module (which runs on a deeper, priviliged mode) has some > malicous code in it, or simply is buggy, and is loaded during runtime, it > could cause a box to simply crash. > > Imagine some attacker exchanging some kernel module against own code, and > causing that module to be loaded (say, some driver for access to certain > filesystems, or zip drive etc...), or waiting for the module to be loaded > (say, for regular, scheduled activities like backups or batch jobs or so) > > Wouldn't it be safer, from a technical point of view, to allow as less > than possible kernel modules, thus enhancing stability and uptime? No. If you allow somebody to overwrite your modules, what's to keep them from overwriting your kernel? -- "Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?" Wes Peters Softweyr LLC wes@softweyr.com http://softweyr.com/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message