Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2008 20:41:34 -0700
From: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@infradead.org>
To: Theodore Tso <tytso@mit.edu>
Cc: david@lang.hm, Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>,
       Eric Paris <eparis@redhat.com>, tvrtko.ursulin@sophos.com,
       alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk, andi@firstfloor.org,
       linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, malware-list@lists.printk.net,
       malware-list-bounces@dmesg.printk.net, peterz@infradead.org,
       viro@ZenIV.linux.org.uk
Subject: Re: [malware-list] TALPA - a threat model?  well sorta.
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On Thu, 14 Aug 2008 22:04:00 -0400
Theodore Tso <tytso@mit.edu> wrote:

> 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).
> 

but we need a "give me all dirty files" solution, not a "is this file
dirty" solution.

I do not want a virus scanner to constantly have to poll the whole fs
for dirty files ;-)

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