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Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2008 22:04:00 -0400
From: Theodore Tso <tytso@mit.edu>
To: david@lang.hm
Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>, Eric Paris <eparis@redhat.com>,
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Subject: Re: [malware-list] TALPA - a threat model?  well sorta.
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On Thu, Aug 14, 2008 at 06:44:33PM -0700, david@lang.hm wrote:
> could you do something like defining a namespace inside posix attributes  
> and then setting up a mechanism in the kernel to alert if the attributes  
> change (with the entire namespace getting cleared if the file gets  
> dirtied)?

According to Eric Paris the clean/dirty state is only stored in
memory.  We could use the extended attribute interface as a way of not
defining a new system call, or some other interface, but I'm not sure
it's such a great match given that the extended attributes interface
are designed for persistent data.

I agree that doesn't actually work very well for the tracker use case,
where you the clean/dirty bit to be persistent (in case the tracker is
disabled due to the fact you are running on battery, for example, and
then you reboot).

						- Ted
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