Re: [PATCH 3/4] security: capabilities patch (version 0.4.4), part 3/4: introduce new capabilities

Casey Schaufler
2006-09-18T16:02:19Z

--- Joshua Brindle <method@gentoo.org> wrote:

> And that is just practical stuff, there are still
> problems with
> embedding policy into binaries all over the system
> in an entirely
> non-analyzable way, and this extends to all
> capabilities, not just the
> open() one.

Your assertion that directly associating
the capabilities with the binary cannot
be analysed is demonstrably incorrect,
reference Common Criteria validation
reports CCEVS-VR-02-0019 and CCEVS-VR-02-0020.

The first system I took through evaluation
(that is, independent 3rd party analysis) stored
security attributes in a file while the second
and third systems attached the attributes
directly (XFS). The 1st evaluation required
5 years, the 2nd 1 year. It is possible that
I just got a lot smarter with age, but I
ascribe a significant amount of the improvement
to the direct association of the attributes
to the file.

Casey Schaufler
casey@schaufler-ca.com