on Thu, Nov 30, 2000 at 09:28:59PM +0000, Adam Langley (agl@linuxpower.org) wrote: > On Thu, Nov 30, 2000 at 12:05:58PM -0800, kmself@ix.netcom.com wrote: > > Response redirected to list. > > Follow-up set to list. > > Yea, sorry. I would suggest that the list set Reply-To, but I'd just > get flamed Mutt 'L' is your friend <g>. > > > It depends on how much you trust gnupg. Setting it SUID means that is > > > can lock pages sure. But it also means that it has to be really secure > > > - if you are running a single-user box then I shouldn't think you're > > > too bothered that someone could find an exploit - but by default it > > > should be secure. > > > > First, this is somewhat nonresponsive to my question: is there a > > specific reason why gpg was not SUID? It's possible that postinstall > > configs didn't run on it, I've had a couple of apt problems in the past > > day or so. > > I'm not involved in the package, but on my box it is SUID: > -rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 563624 Oct 17 17:35 /usr/bin/gpg > > I have gnupg 1.0.4-1 I'd also confirmed this on another box. Though I can never remember what the !@#$%^&*() mode bit is for SUID. '4577' was what I was looking for, IIRC. > > Second, what do you want to trust: a single SUID program, earmarked as > > a high-priority security issue, or every application running on the box > > with access to priviledged memory. > > Applications with access to gnupg's memory are either running as root > or as the user owner of the gnupg process. You must trust root, and I > don't think that a bad process running as you would read gnupg's > memory (strace the shell and hook exec, for example). > The issue is the swap; locked pages are never swapped out, so the disk never > seeks them. If someone could pick over your swap then they could pickout > sectors with high-entropy and possibly they would be your privkey. So: the locked pages are still accessible to other root processes, but not to user-land programs, and they're not swapped to disk? -- Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://www.netcom.com/~kmself Evangelist, Zelerate, Inc. http://www.zelerate.org What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? There is no K5 cabal http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ http://www.kuro5hin.org
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