Re: patch to make Linux capabilities into something useful (v 0.3.1)

Jan Engelhardt
2006-09-07T06:44:16Z

>> In the meantime, so long as you're adding some new capabilities, how
>> about also splitting up a few like CAP_SYS_ADMIN? Have you looked into
>> it and decided none are really separable, i.e. any subset leads to the
>> ability to get any other subset?
>
>I agree that splitting CAP_SYS_ADMIN might be worth while, but it
>really looks like opening a worm can, so I didn't feel up to the
>challenge there. It might be a good idea to reserve some bits for
>that possibility, however - I'm not sure how best to proceed.

Split it into read and write options, for a start. This is important in
a sub-"root"-user environment as is currently created with my MultiAdm
LSM, which, due to the broad spectrum CAP_SYS_ADMIN addresses, must
give SYS_ADMIN to the subadmin (to be able to read restricted objects)
and restrict it afterwards in all the LSM hooks (to not write to
restricted objects).

http://lkml.org/lkml/2006/5/1/105
http://lkml.org/lkml/2006/5/1/110 <- important

Jan Engelhardt
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