[rsbac] howto questions

[Jesse Pollard]

Metrix <metrix007@yahoo.com>:
> 
> I am really looking forward to this howto, I was just
> wondering if setting up X will be covered, while not
> urgent, it is anoying to reboot whenever I need to use
> X. Out of curiosity, why when i give root permission o
> /dev/mem, i still cannot cat /dev/mem, do i have to
> give permission to /bin/cat? I know it is a bad idea,
> I am just curious...
> 
> Furthermore, is RSBAC secure by default, eg if an
> exploit is released and an rsbac system is running
> vulnerable software, will the exploit still grant a
> shell, or will it not allow the exploit to be executed?

The only thing thst should access /dev/kmem is xdm, or
whichever variant you are using. This is because xdm
is using a "crypto"sum of /dev/mem to generate the X
authorization keys. It doesn't know about /dev/random
yet. And no you can't just switch the link - xdm uses
something else to determine the amount of data to read.
After xdm generates the sum it stores it, and starts
the X server which reads that file, it also passes it
to a subprocess that prompts for login. When that succeeds
the subprocess stores it in the users Xauthority.

I think it reads to EOF, but havn't looked yet, /dev
(u)random don't have an EOF.

Now that I'm thinking about it, you might be able to
substitute a service that waits for an open on a FIFO,
then just copies 1-2 k of /dev/random to the FIFO and
closes....

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