Re: [kernel-hardening] overview of PaX features

[Solar Designer <solar@openwall.com>]

Vasiliy,

On Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 10:33:21PM +0400, Vasiliy Kulikov wrote:
> PaXTeam said there is almost nothing I can do with userspace NX.
> Currently it is implemented as a "stack can be X unless GNU_STACK is
> enabled" instead of secure by default policy.  It's impossible to fix it
> not breaking the compatibility with old apps.  So, I'm skipping NOEXEC
> options.

Please do break compatibility with a handful of old apps - but as a
non-default option (which we're likely to make the default on Owl, just
like we had non-executable stack by default with 2.4.x-ow kernels).

With OpenVZ, it needs to be configurable per-container.

This is an important security hardening feature for us to have, so
please proceed to implement it sooner rather than later.

I'm sorry that I haven't reviewed the rest of your message yet (and am
in fact a bit late with this comment as well...)

Thanks,

Alexander