selinux diversion [was Re: Usermode request: add patch enabling group membership to control auth user]

[Matthew Miller]

[changing the subject because I didn't really mean to get derailed on the
SELinux thing.]

On Fri, Apr 16, 2004 at 10:20:48AM -0400, Stephen Smalley wrote:
> - Bounded privilege escalation is a good thing.

Definitely.

> - You can configure the policy to do as you wish, and I think that the
> policy tunables already exist to allow it (and are even enabled by
> default in the RH policy).

Not sure what "it" is referring to in this sentence.

> - The existing permissions model is fundamentally inadequate by itself,
> and it makes no sense to try to turn DAC into MAC.  See
> http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/papers/inevit-abs.cfm.

Yep. I'm just increasingly unsure about the implementation. If a SELinux
configuration can allow a user to access things that would normally be
denied by traditional Unix security, that's *crazy*.


-- 
Matthew Miller           mattdm at mattdm.org        <http://www.mattdm.org/>
Boston University Linux      ------>                <http://linux.bu.edu/>