Subject: Re: TALPA - a threat model?  well sorta.
From: Eric Paris <eparis@redhat.com>
To: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, malware-list@lists.printk.net,
       andi@firstfloor.org, riel@redhat.com, greg@kroah.com, tytso@mit.edu,
       viro@ZenIV.linux.org.uk, arjan@infradead.org, peterz@infradead.org,
       hch@infradead.org
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Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:00:33 -0400
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On Wed, 2008-08-13 at 17:37 +0100, Alan Cox wrote:
> On Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:47:45 -0400
> Eric Paris <eparis@redhat.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, 2008-08-13 at 17:24 +0100, Alan Cox wrote:
> > > > So, what is it that anti-malware companies do?  They scan files.  That's
> > > > it. 
> > > 
> > > Good so lets instead have a discussion about making the file event
> > > notification more scalable. That is the same thing I want for content
> > > indexing. It is the same thing you want for certain kinds of smart
> > > archiving, for on-line asynchronous backup and other stuff.
> > > 
> > > It ought to be a simple clean syscall interface.
> > 
> > Are you willing to make it blocking?  I'm not sure how to make what we
> > have capable of assuring that the object you got a notification about is
> > actually the object you are acting on.  Thoughts on how to accomplish
> > that?  I'm here to code and I'm willing to throw all my work in the
> > garbage if someone can show me how to actually do it better.
> 
> I don't think you need to be blocking if you passed up a file handle ?

Without blocking and waiting how do you deny access?  Maybe I needed
another thing they do.  "They do file scanning and deny access to bad
files."

async scanning on close/write is great.  but you need blocking/access
control on open/read.....

> 	fd = fileeventmumble(somestuff);
> 	do_stuff
> 	close(fd);
> 
> [taking care not to end up recursing as a result]

[you pointed out the whole point of process exclusions in the original
work]

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