Re: odd habits with binary blobs.....

[devzero@web.de]

>>On Wed 2008-12-03 22:40:51, devzero@web.de wrote:
>> hello, 
>> 
>> i gave r1soft`s new/free "hot copy" a try today and .... failed:
>> 
>> vserver2:/tmp/usr/sbin # ./hcp-setup
>> Gathering kernel information
>> Gathering kernel information complete.
>> Error: A network error occurred connecting to 'kmod32.r1soft.com'
>> 
>> what a pain....trying to setup a linux kernel module, the installer wants to phone \
>> home - and fails. 
>> but it`s even worse - http://wiki.r1soft.com/display/LTR1D/hcp-setup tells:
>> 
>> BUILDING HOT COPY DRIVER FROM SOURCE
>> 
>> hcp-setup will tar up your kernel source tree or headers and upload them to an \
>> R1Soft build server over HTTPS using XML-RPC. Once your system's kernel headers or \
>> source have been uploaded the R1Soft build server will compile a Hot Copy device \
>> driver as a kernel module and hcp-setup will automatically download it to your \
>> system. 
>> In order for hcp-setup to work your Linux server must have HTTPS Internet access to \
>> kmod32.r1soft.com (32-bit systems) and kmod64.r1soft.com (64-bit systems) 
>> 
>> how weird is THAT?
>> 
>> did anybody ever come across such "build binary blobs remotely" system ?
>> 
>> 
>> ok, disqualified.  won`t touch it again, as i also don`t know what REALLY is \
>> transferred to the vendor - but i wonder what kernel devs think about such build \
>> system and what in-kernel alternative exists for this. (i think it doesn`t exist - \
>> but maybe somebody working on that ?) 

>Hmm. Gcc was not really designed to prevent .c source from exploiting
>it.
>
>So I guess you could have some phun :-).
>
>									Pavel

I already thought of that.
but isn`t it that not just a matter of gcc exploitability ?
what about uploading specially crafted makefiles, setup-scripts or kernel-source 
containing backdoors.....?

besides hacking into the build servers - the problem i see is that other users download 
binary code from a such potentially compromised system and/or may download kernel-
modules which could (!?) contain binary code compiled from untrusted sourcecode....
maybe BugTraq ML is a better place to discuss.....

roland
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