Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S262062AbVAYS6V (ORCPT ); Tue, 25 Jan 2005 13:58:21 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S262060AbVAYS6V (ORCPT ); Tue, 25 Jan 2005 13:58:21 -0500 Received: from rproxy.gmail.com ([64.233.170.201]:41907 "EHLO rproxy.gmail.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S262062AbVAYS5K (ORCPT ); Tue, 25 Jan 2005 13:57:10 -0500 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=gmail.com; h=received:message-id:date:from:reply-to:to:subject:cc:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:references; b=SjDkiNwmgSTIqkuIQnWuf2qUUZxGXJOmi7k/pCsr5H1bIMh4Hz4lSq0pCeoRuBLv7gW06CV3TdXTS6Y8XEDYfDDj+k7dX10E2kshD1RNNWWgv24gfSezedmMSfW0vqxDi+cPGpzgfy25nCRT39pNYj8eeLXymxTYotBSZ53ykBU= Message-ID: Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2005 13:57:06 -0500 From: Dmitry Torokhov Reply-To: dtor_core@ameritech.net To: John Richard Moser Subject: Re: thoughts on kernel security issues Cc: Linus Torvalds , Bill Davidsen , Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu, Arjan van de Ven , Ingo Molnar , Christoph Hellwig , Dave Jones , Andrew Morton , marcelo.tosatti@cyclades.com, Greg KH , chrisw@osdl.org, Alan Cox , Kernel Mailing List In-Reply-To: <41F691D6.8040803@comcast.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <1106157152.6310.171.camel@laptopd505.fenrus.org> <200501191947.j0JJlf3j024206@turing-police.cc.vt.edu> <41F6604B.4090905@tmr.com> <41F6816D.1020306@tmr.com> <41F68975.8010405@comcast.net> <41F691D6.8040803@comcast.net> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1511 Lines: 41 On Tue, 25 Jan 2005 13:37:10 -0500, John Richard Moser wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > > Linus Torvalds wrote: > > > > On Tue, 25 Jan 2005, John Richard Moser wrote: > > > >>It's kind of like locking your front door, or your back door. If one is > >>locked and the other other is still wide open, then you might as well > >>not even have doors. If you lock both, then you (finally) create a > >>problem for an intruder. > >> > >>That is to say, patch A will apply and work without B; patch B will > >>apply and work without patch A; but there's no real gain from using > >>either without the other. > > > > > > Sure there is. There's the gain that if you lock the front door but not > > the back door, somebody who goes door-to-door, opportunistically knocking > > on them and testing them, _will_ be discouraged by locking the front door. > > > > In the real world yes. On the computer, the front and back doors are > half-consumed by a short-path wormhole that places them right next to > eachother, so not really. :) > Then one might argue that doing any security patches is meaningless because, as with bugs, there will always be some other hole not covered by both A and B so why bother? -- Dmitry - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/