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Re: A question about Knark and modules



On Sun, Jun 17, 2001 at 07:55:40PM -0800, Ethan Benson wrote:
> 
> a bit.  lids makes system adminsitration utterly impossible.  unless
> you leave enough holes open which an attacker can use to bypass it
> all. 
well nearly...
at least you can prevent new or unknown process/files from acessing stuff. 
If there is an exploit for an existing piece of software you are back at 
square one.

The advantage is extremely granular control: a program at a specific inode
can be given capabilities while everything else has them refused.

the disadvantage is that you end up with a million little holes (complexity)
fortunately the files that have these added capabilities are also 
protected (from trojaning - buffer overruns etc still work)

> 
> the thing is once you make exceptions for the system adminsistrator to
> use to maintain the you open the holes the attacker needs to trojan
> your system and to remove the additional obsticales you installed.  

yes it is possible with lids, but it is a _lot_ harder:
processes can be hidden.
binaries RO (trojaning is difficult)
logs append 
/etc/somefile can only be read when you allow it. 

> 
> system adminsitrator == root
> cracker == root
> 
cracker==root sysadmin==root+LIDS_password
if someone can sniff me typing in my lids password (encrypted in the kernel)
then I am stuffed.

In short Lids can be a pain to set up, but would also be a pain to crack,
especially if the cracker doesn't know exactly which rules I have set up.
a good cracker could do it.

btw I notice that they are still working on fork bomb protection. that would
be nice :)

-- 



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