Re: [PATCH] support for Cobalt Networks (x86 only) systems (for realthis time)

[Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@mandrakesoft.com>]

Bogdan Costescu wrote:
> 
> On Fri, 1 Jun 2001, Pete Zaitcev wrote:
> 
> > > But, each time a user cats this proc file, the user is banging the
> > > hardware.  What happens when a malicious user forks off 100 processes to
> > > continually cat this file?  :)
> >
> > Nothing good, probably. Same story as /proc/apm, which only
> > hits BIOS instead (and it's debateable what is better).
> 
> Hmm, the MII related ioctl's in some net drivers (checked for 3c59x,
> tulip, eepro100) are also querying the hardware. And a user is allowed to
> ask for this info (but not able to modify it).

And a malicious user calling those at a high rate is bound to get ugly.

In both of these situations, calling the ioctls without priveleges is
quite useful, so maybe rate-limiting for ioctls and proc files like this
would be a good idea in general.

	Jeff


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