TrustedBSD...

Matthew Dillon dillon at apollo.backplane.com
Tue Dec 9 11:06:33 PST 2003


:-On [20031208 23:12], Ryan Dooley (dooleyr at xxxxxxxxxxxx) wrote:
:>I don't have access to the perforce trees (I'm normally not a developer) 
:>but I think it would be cool if DFly could give the OpenBSD folks a run 
:>for their money :-)
:
:I'm not sure if that would be useful for the DragonFly project, I'll let
:Matt decide on that.  But everything pretty fundamental, such as the
:TrustedBSD project, detracts us from reaching the goal DragonFly is
:striving towards, namely: easy and fast clustering, scalability, and
:stability.
:
:Of course, Matt should correct me if I totally misinterpreted something,
:but this should be one of those 'wannahaves' to be put on the backburner
:for a while.
:
:Also, note that we're not trying to compete with OpenBSD here.  The
:projects' aims lie in way different directions.
:
:-- 
:Jeroen Ruigrok van der Werven <asmodai(at)wxs.nl> / asmodai / kita no mono

   Trusted BSD is an interesting project but I don't like the mess it makes
   in the FreeBSD-5 kernel, and it does not solve the most basic problem of
   bugs in system calls creating root holes.

   NetBSD or OpenBSD (I forget which) has a system call masking feature which
   is probably more effective.

   I don't dislike the idea of having compartmentalized security, I just 
   think it is far safer to have it all in one place... e.g. like a loadable
   'filter' on the syscall messages (and VFS messages, and DEV messages),
   instead of having to go in and modify individual system calls, filesystems,
   and so forth.

   If the only way to get into the kernel is via a syscall message, and the
   only way to access a filesystem is via a VFS message, and the only way to
   access a device is via a device message, then that is where we code up
   our security mechanisms.

					-Matt
					Matthew Dillon 
					<dillon at xxxxxxxxxxxxx>





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