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Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2002 00:04:00 -0700
From: Crispin Cowan <crispin@wirex.com>
Organization: WireX Communications, Inc.
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To: Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>
Cc: Greg KH <greg@kroah.com>, torvalds@transmeta.com,
       linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-security-module@wirex.com
Subject: Re: [PATCH] remove sys_security
References: <20021017195015.A4747@infradead.org> <20021017185352.GA32537@kroah.com> <20021017195838.A5325@infradead.org> <20021017190723.GB32537@kroah.com> <20021017210402.A7741@infradead.org> <20021017201030.GA384@kroah.com> <20021017211223.A8095@infradead.org>
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Christoph Hellwig wrote:

>On Thu, Oct 17, 2002 at 01:10:31PM -0700, Greg KH wrote:
>  
>
>>>>How would they be done differently now?  Multiple different syscalls?
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>Yes.
>>>      
>>>
>>Hm, in looking at the SELinux documentation, here's a list of the
>>syscalls they need:
>>	http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/docs2.html
>>
>>That's a lot of syscalls :)
>>    
>>
>I know.  but hiding them doesn't make them any better..
>
Actuall, yes it does, and that is the point. You don't have to like 
SELinux's system calls, or any other module's syscalls. The whole point 
of LSM was to decouple security design from the Linux kernel development.

There are a butt-load of different access control models, and many of 
them are not compatible with one another. You wouldn't want to support 
them all--that would be serious bloat. So instead, LSM lets each user 
choose the model that suits them:

    * server users can choose a highly secure model
    * workstation users can choose something desktop oriented
    * embedded people can choose nothing at all, or the specific
      narrow-cast model that they need

On the other hand: what is the big cost here? One system call. Isn't 
that actually *lower* overhead than the (say) half dozen 
security-oriented syscalls we might convince you to accept if we drop 
the sys_security syscall as you suggest? Why the fierce desire to remove 
something so cheap?

Crispin

-- 
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX                      http://wirex.com/~crispin/
Security Hardened Linux Distribution:       http://immunix.org
Available for purchase: http://wirex.com/Products/Immunix/purchase.html


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