[Security_sig] 9/2 Conf. call minutes

Chris Wright chrisw at osdl.org
Thu Sep 2 16:07:49 PDT 2004


* Andy Murren (andy at murren.org) wrote:
> All,
> 
> I think that a series of deliverables with 6-9 month time lines may be a
> way for us to handle defining Linux security standards without hurting
> ourselves.

What's the fun in that? ;-)  But yes, it is reasonable.

> Having root broken up into seperate capabilities is something that will
> take time for the developer community to implement.  Should we have a
> sub-team focusing on the seperation of root duties that can report back to
> the team recommendations on how to implement?

It could take a really long time.  Capabilities have been (somewhat
broken) in the kernel for literally years now, with very little
userspace usage.  This is actually interesting, however, because as new
security models become available they have userspace interaction (read:
adoption by application programmers) issue.  This will be a problem if
kernel space models proliferate.  It's addressable via libraries, but
only if the interfaces are well-defined.

> Other items will be configuration defaults that distributors and
> individuals can implement.  Those items are the low hanging fruit that can
> be done in a reasonably short time frame.  Much of that work has been
> done, but we might want to consolidate it and put it forth as a standard.

Starting point could be Bastille Linux scripts, etc.  Secure by default
would be nice goal.

thanks,
-chris
-- 
Linux Security Modules     http://lsm.immunix.org     http://lsm.bkbits.net



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