From: Joerg Schilling <schilling@fokus.fraunhofer.de>
Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 16:13:00 +0100
To: matthias.andree@gmx.de, jengelh@linux01.gwdg.de
Cc: schilling@fokus.fraunhofer.de, rlrevell@joe-job.com,
       matthias.andree@gmx.de, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: CD writing in future Linux (stirring up a hornets' nest)
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Matthias Andree <matthias.andree@gmx.de> wrote:

> cdrecord simply assumes that if you don't have access to /dev/hda,
> scanning the other devices is pointless, on the assumption it were a
> security risk. How this fits into user profiles that might allow access
> to /dev/hdc, is unclear to me.

Wrong: cdrecord asumes nothing. It is the SCSI Generic transport library libscg.

Note that libscg does not offer access to a block layer device like /dev/hd* 
but rather to the transport layer _below_ /dev/hd*. If you ignore this fact you 
will have problems to understand the rules.

> > If you can access a _harddisk_ as a normal user, you _do have_ a security 
> > problem. If you can access a cdrom as normal user, well, the opinions 
> > differ here. I think you _should not either_, because it might happen that 
> > you just left your presentation cd in a cdrom device in a public box. You 
> > would certainly not want to have everyone read that out.
>
> That's less of a problem than sending vendor-specific commands - one
> might be "update firmware", which would allow the user to destroy the
> drive.

I am not sure whether you understood the problem here. Cdrtools need to deal 
with a lot of vendor specific commands. 

J?rg

-- 
 EMail:joerg@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) J?rg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       js@cs.tu-berlin.de                (uni)  
       schilling@fokus.fraunhofer.de     (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily
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