Re: Questions

[Bas Wijnen]

Sam Mason wrote:
> An interesting discussion then becomes how do we determine the
> permissions of everything?  We probably don't want remote users to be
> able to talk to whatever device was just plugged in.  But I guess this
> isn't anything of great immediate interest as it should be easy to
> leave this sort of policy till much later.

This problem is already solved in the Hurd on Mach.  The actual device 
drivers are translators on files.  A translator can only be started by 
the owner of a file.  By default, users will only follow translators 
owned by themselves or root.  If you want to use someone elses 
translator, you have to specifically say so, otherwise you end up 
accessing the file it connects to.

This is especially important for root, who doesn't want to risk 
executing user code every time an operation on untrusted files is 
performed.  The programs are still executed by the running user, which 
is root.

Thanks,
Bas

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