Re: [Xenomai-help] Xenomai and capabilities

[Jan Kiszka <jan.kiszka@domain.hid>]

Am 11.10.2010 18:49, Gilles Chanteperdrix wrote:
> Jan Kiszka wrote:
>> Am 11.10.2010 18:23, Gilles Chanteperdrix wrote:
>>> Jan Kiszka wrote:
>>>> enabling the Xenomai watchdog should provide a reasonably safe&secure
>>>> environment.
>>> AFAIK, the BIG FAT warning at the bottom of this page still applies. You
>>> can make an environment with no hardware lockups, but secure, I do not
>>> think so. We do not know how Xenomai APIs could be exploited for a
>>> non-root user to become root.
>>
>> For sure, no one audited the interface for security so far. There is no
>> hole in design that comes to my mind ATM, but I would be surprised as
>> well if you couldn't develop any exploit for some bug or missing check.
>> Still, there is a huge difference between giving anyone root access and
>> confining Xenomai access this way.
> 
> I was just reacting to "reasonably secure". The experience proves that
> if you do not do any particular effort for security, then your code is
> not secure. Not even reasonably.

This is no black-or-white domain, and I wouldn't say we spend no effort
on security at all. We do have interest in making the userspace APIs
robust which addresses security up to a certain level as well.

What is still definitely not secure, though, is RTnet as it consequently
lacks any kind of check on user-passed addresses. But that's not
Xenomai's fault (rather mine).

Jan

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