Hi! > > this intentionally calls mprotect(PROT_EXEC) for the highest possible > > address one can think of. This call has no useful purpose at all. In other > > words, this is a specific, underhand cheat to trigger 'Vulnerable' > > messages for all items when running paxtest on exec-shield kernels. Bravo!
If you get bad grades on school, don't work harder, blame the teacher. Other people have been asking for such a test, because there was speculation about this vulnerability in exec-shield. It is in fact a simulation of a multithreaded application. I objected to adding tests that include a multi- threaded library, because the library might interfere with the results of the test. So instead of adding a library that would perform the mprotect(), the mprotect() itself was added. Since multi-threaded applications are not that uncommon. Therefore the results are quite relevant I think. People deserve to know what the limitations the security products they use have. That is why the return to function tests have been included, to show that PaX is good but not perfect. Paxtest simply shows if people tell the truth about memory protection patches. I wrote it to see if what pageexec told me about it was true or not, so I wouldn't lie to people when I tell them Adamantix has good memory protection. There are already too many lies in the security world that there is no need for even more. And after all, if exec-shield is being included in the Debian default kernel source, then you are talking about the pride of a 1000 developers that are at stake here. That is not something you should take lightly if you ask me. :-) > > frankly, i've never experienced anything like this in my many years in the > > Linux world. You so far gave the impression of a reasonable and balanced > > person but this is as low as it gets. Shame on you. Do you have the detailed specification of exec-shield somewhere? That would make it easier to evaluate the completeness of the test suite. Feel free to submit tests yourself, I'll add any sensible test. Groetjes, Peter Busser -- The Adamantix Project Taking high-security Linux out of the labs, and into the real world http://www.adamantix.org/
