On Wed, 2 Apr 2003, Paolo Falcone wrote:

> Hehehe... we discussed this at #plug last night... although it might not
> seem fair for the other players that cannot modify the kernels of their
> systems as easily as free operating systems can :-)

eh sorry sila.  proprietary black box kasi yung OS nila eh.  now it's
backfiring against them.

> If this would be allowed, I believe it would be taxing to reinvent everything.
> I'd propose a less intrusive means of securing the box (for sure they
> can have a kernel which implements its stack as non-executable, at the
> expense of breaking compatibility with the stock applications, and other
> issues we can conceive)... 
> 

unfortunately, the stock linux kernel has still no built-in measures to
power down the all-powerful root in a usable state or protect the memory
pages (stack, heap, data) against buffer overflows, to do mandatory
access controls at the file, network and process levels, and to limit
direct memory/disk access. that's why it helps alot in the real world to
go the extra mile in installing kernel-intrusive security patches.

remember, the kernel is the "Omega Sector - The Last Line of Defense" 
if all else fails at userland.  

the business apps that usually break with a patched kernel are X & Java
Runtime Environment but there is a workaround to allow them to run anyway.

pong

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