Re: Status of capabilities?

[Jesse Pollard <pollard@tomcat.admin.navo.hpc.mil>]

Dax Kelson <dax@gurulabs.com>:

> 
> On Wed, 2002-06-26 at 06:40, Michael Kerrisk wrote:
> 
> > What's still missing in 2.4, as far as I can see after reading the sources,
> > is the ability to set capabilities on executable files so that a process
> > gains those privileges when executing the file.  I recall seeing some
> > information somewhere saying this wasn't possible / wasn't going to happen
> > for ext2.  Is it on the drawing board for any file system?
> 
> The 2.5 VFS supports Extended Attributes (since 2.5.3). I think the plan
> was use EAs to store capabilities. So I believe that the infrastructure
> is in place, someone with the proper skills just needs to:
> 
> 1. Define how capabilities will be stored as a EA
> 2. Teach fs/exec.c to use the capabilities stored with the file
> 3. Write lscap(1)
> 4. Write chcap(1)
> 5. Audit/fix all SUID root binaries to use capabilities
> 6. Set appropriate capabilities with for each with chcap(1) and then:
>    # find / -type f -perm -4000 -user root -exec chmod u-s {} \;
> 7. Party and snicker in the general direction of that OS with the slogan
> "One remote hole in the default install, in nearly 6 years!"

Actually, I think most of that work has already been done by the Linux
Security Module project (well, except #7).

see:
	http://lsm.immunix.org/

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jesse I Pollard, II
Email: pollard@navo.hpc.mil

Any opinions expressed are solely my own.