X doesn't have to worry about... [LWN.net]

X doesn't have to worry about...

Posted Dec 6, 2013 4:02 UTC (Fri) by smoogen (subscriber, #97)
Parent article: Another daemon for managing control groups

Does anyone else get the feeling that anytime a Google/Facebook/Amazon/etc engineer says something that boils down to "We trust everything in our cluster as we control it" someone in the NSA goes "Oh reallly.... " [You can trade out NSA with FSB, GCHQ, etc etc as needed.]

I have the feeling that as more data ends up being encrypted site to site and server to server, interserver exploits will be the area of highest concern and focus for these agencies.

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X doesn't have to worry about...

Posted Dec 6, 2013 8:45 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

I'm not sure if you are underestimating or overestimating Google/Facebook/Amazon/etc engineer capabilities.

The primary maxima here is very simple: “if and when one can call arbitrary unrestricted Linux syscalls one can own the system”. Security track record of Linux kernel certainly support this POV (yes, even “hardened” ones had plethora of vulnerabilities exposed and undoubtedly have many more currently uncovered ones).

But if you filter Linux ABI access and not trust Linux kernel (without heavy-duty protections like seccomp-bpf) then why would you care about all these security implications Tejun is talking about?