[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: libsafe and Debian installation



On Tue, Apr 23, 2002 at 05:20:13PM -0500, Colin Watson wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 23, 2002 at 05:33:00PM +0200, Jeroen Dekkers wrote:
> > If you don't give any permissions to some code running, it can't be a
> > security problem if there are bugs.
> 
> Not true. If I crack your FTP server and subvert it into serving content
> it wasn't intended to serve, then that's a security breach. Whether I
> managed to gain root privileges too is a separate issue.

If you don't give write access to the content, it can't modify
that. Of course you could let it serve other content in theory, but in
practice it's a lot more difficult (and maybe impossible, but I'm not
sure about that, as I don't know all the small details and how clever
things you can do). If possible the impact would be smaller, because
it's impossible to modify the files.
 
> Thinking that privilege elevation is the only kind of security breach is
> dangerous, as it lulls programmers into complacency.

True, but it one of the important security problems IMHO.

Jeroen Dekkers
-- 
Jabber supporter - http://www.jabber.org Jabber ID: jdekkers@jabber.org
Debian GNU supporter - http://www.debian.org http://www.gnu.org
IRC: jeroen@openprojects

Attachment: pgpupv0qrxtQD.pgp
Description: PGP signature


Reply to: