From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1750950AbWDSQd2 (ORCPT ); Wed, 19 Apr 2006 12:33:28 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1750994AbWDSQd2 (ORCPT ); Wed, 19 Apr 2006 12:33:28 -0400 Received: from mail7.sea5.speakeasy.net ([69.17.117.9]:14737 "EHLO mail7.sea5.speakeasy.net") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750950AbWDSQd1 (ORCPT ); Wed, 19 Apr 2006 12:33:27 -0400 Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2006 12:33:24 -0400 (EDT) From: James Morris X-X-Sender: jmorris@d.namei To: Greg KH cc: Jan Engelhardt , Christoph Hellwig , Andrew Morton , Stephen Smalley , T?r?k Edwin , linux-security-module@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Chris Wright , Linus Torvalds Subject: Re: Time to remove LSM (was Re: [RESEND][RFC][PATCH 2/7] implementation of LSM hooks) In-Reply-To: <20060419154011.GA26635@kroah.com> Message-ID: References: <200604072138.35201.edwin@gurde.com> <1144863768.32059.67.camel@moss-spartans.epoch.ncsc.mil> <200604142301.10188.edwin@gurde.com> <1145290013.8542.141.camel@moss-spartans.epoch.ncsc.mil> <20060417162345.GA9609@infradead.org> <1145293404.8542.190.camel@moss-spartans.epoch.ncsc.mil> <20060417173319.GA11506@infradead.org> <20060417195146.GA8875@kroah.com> <20060419154011.GA26635@kroah.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Wed, 19 Apr 2006, Greg KH wrote: > So please feel free to submit your patch, especially as without another > LSM user in the kernel tree, the interface will probably go away. At this point, LSM has really proven itself to be a bad interface and should probably go away in any case. Its semantics are too weak, and developers are not designing their code according to what is suitable for the kernel, but rather, whatever happens to fit easily into LSM, which us just about anything. The LSM interface is also being abused by several proprietary kernel modules, some of which are not even security related. In one case, there's code which dangerously revectors SELinux with a shim layer designed to try and bypass the GPL. Some of this is a response to unexporting the syscall table, where projects which abused that have now switched to LSM. I think it's clear now, if it wasn't already, that bad interfaces foster bad code. - James -- James Morris