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> SELinux has been able to solve the problem of "if a policy says X can't get to Y, prevent X from getting to Y" for years. Regular UNIX permissions have been d
by vageli 7y ago
> SELinux has been able to solve the problem of "if a policy says X can't get to Y, prevent X from getting to Y" for years. Regular UNIX permissions have been doing the same for decades. (Yes, SELinux and regular UNIX permissions take a different approach / let you write the policy differently, but that's the problem they're fundamentally solving; given a clear description of who to deny access to, deny this access.) Neither SELinux nor UNIX permissions nor anything else has solved the problem of "Actually, in this circumstance I mean for X to get to Y, but in that circumstance I don't, and this is obvious to a human but there's no clear programmable distinction between the cases."
I don't think even your examples are obvious to everyone. For example, if paramiko is installed as a dependency of something else, it's not clear that you want to grant it access to your keys. Further, you might want to grant access to some but not all keys. There are many nuances that are unique to the particular use case which I don't think are obvious. However, that doesn't explain the inability of tools to allow us to describe these relationships.
- greggman2 7y agoIs it possible the OS should be designed so only the OS can read the actual private key so then at least at some level some apps don't ever need to see the key, they just need permission to authenticate.
- geofft 7y agoAs described in a sibling thread, while that contains the damage, that doesn't actually solve the problem - you're still giving malicious code permission to authenticate.