4 ms·
Why would it be dangerous?
by jfkebwjsbx 7y ago
Why would it be dangerous?
- flqn 7y agoI'm assuming concurrency concerns of trying to execute code that is mid-patch
- jfkebwjsbx 7y agoKernel developers have to deal with concurrency, interrupts, preemption and more on a daily basis, so why would this be more dangerous?
- asveikau 7y agoSome people are really against writable executable pages for security reasons. Eg. 20 years ago executable stacks were common, and people like OpenBSD and others made a stink about removing it. The W^X mitigations. More recently, Apple got really strongly into the "no executable writeable pages" stance, banning JITs from the app store and a bunch of other somewhat unreasonable stuff that is really about not letting apps download code without going through an Apple reviewer, rather than a practical security concern. Since that time there seem to be mildly dubious or cargo cult hate for writable code in some circles, who insist it's legit security practices and not a walled garden enforcement mechanism.
- jfkebwjsbx 7y agoThis is kernel space. If you have a way to overwrite arbitrary kernel memory all bets are off, even with no modifiable code. Apple's policies are dictated by commercial reasons, not technical, so not much to discuss there.
- asveikau 7y agoYes. But people rush into a kneejerk defense of superego (Apple is right all the time) and think that rewriting code pages is universally evil. And to be fair it is tricky and slow.