public inbox for linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: Al Viro <viro@ftp.linux.org.uk>
To: Alon Bar-Lev <alon.barlev@gmail.com>
Cc: Brian Gerst <bgerst@didntduck.org>,
	"Jonathan M. McCune" <jonmccune@cmu.edu>,
	linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
	Arvind Seshadri <arvinds@cs.cmu.edu>, Bryan Parno <parno@cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: using segmentation in the kernel
Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2005 22:12:15 +0100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20051011211215.GV7992@ftp.linux.org.uk> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <434C1F8E.6080405@gmail.com>

On Tue, Oct 11, 2005 at 10:24:46PM +0200, Alon Bar-Lev wrote:
> Brian Gerst wrote:
> >Jonathan M. McCune wrote:
> >
> >>Hello,
> >>
> >Why send the kernel back to the 2.0 days?  There is no valid reason for 
> >doing this with they way x86 segmentation works, which is why it was 
> >done away with in 2.1.
> >
> 
> But with segmentation you can set code to be read-only, 
> disallow execution from stack, separate modules so that they 
> will not affect kernel and more...

You do realize that it's a BS, don't you?

* attacker that would rewrite kernel code can switch a pointer to method in
any of the method tables (or pointer to the entire method table, while we are
at it).
* overwriting return address is trivial if you got stack smashing and there
is a plenty of interesting functions in the kernel ready to elevate priveleges
* modules rely on practically complete access to kernel data structures, so
no amount of playing with rings will change anything for them.

  reply	other threads:[~2005-10-11 21:12 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 11+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2005-10-11 20:15 using segmentation in the kernel Jonathan M. McCune
2005-10-11 20:36 ` Brian Gerst
2005-10-11 20:24   ` Alon Bar-Lev
2005-10-11 21:12     ` Al Viro [this message]
2005-10-11 21:14     ` Brian Gerst
2005-10-12  9:05     ` Arjan van de Ven
2005-10-12 16:07       ` Alan Cox
2005-10-12 15:44         ` Arjan van de Ven
2005-10-12 23:55         ` Jonathan M. McCune
2005-10-12 13:03 ` linux-os (Dick Johnson)
2005-10-13  8:51   ` Denis Vlasenko

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to=20051011211215.GV7992@ftp.linux.org.uk \
    --to=viro@ftp.linux.org.uk \
    --cc=alon.barlev@gmail.com \
    --cc=arvinds@cs.cmu.edu \
    --cc=bgerst@didntduck.org \
    --cc=jonmccune@cmu.edu \
    --cc=linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org \
    --cc=parno@cmu.edu \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html

* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
  via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox