Re: [SECURITY] suid procs exec'd with bad 0,1,2 fds

Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH (allbery@kf8nh.apk.net)
Thu, 06 Aug 1998 19:09:30 -0300

In message <19980806184916.B16801@perlsupport.com>, Chip Salzenberg writes:
+-----
| According to Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH:
| > According to Andrej Presern:
| > > However, UNIX is broken with respect to security _by design_
| > This usually refers to a quote from a paper by DMR about 7RE [...]
| > two quotes: one about Unix being intended to share information, not
| > hide it, and another which basically said "don't look here for security".
|
| OK, so somebody said "don't look here for security". Does that in
| fact constitute being broken by design? Nope; it's just a quote from
+--->8

I vaguely (note: *vaguely*; that's why I don't want to commit to it) recall
a DMR paper about 7RE security which started out with something along the
lines of "Unix was not designed for security, which virtually guarantees a
large number of security holes".

You are correct in saying that this does not translate to "broken by design"
--- unless you take a "hard-line" approach to security, in which any OS not
designed from the ground up for security is considered virtually impossible
to secure.

(Then again, *that* argument goes back almost as far as the DMR paper. It
might even be mentioned in the paper; I really don't remember any more.)

-- 
brandon s. allbery	[os/2][linux][solaris][japh]	 allbery@kf8nh.apk.net
system administrator	     [WAY too many hats]	   allbery@ece.cmu.edu
electrical and computer engineering
carnegie mellon university			   (bsa@kf8nh is still valid.)






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