Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 21 Jul 2000 13:00:32 +0200 (CEST) | From | Peter Svensson <> | Subject | Re: TO HELL WITH IT THEN......(re: disk-destroyer.c) |
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On Fri, 21 Jul 2000 bodnar42@bodnar42.dhs.org wrote:
> Violations of the ATA specification should be prevented, if not for > protection from users shooting themselves in the foot (I still fail to see > this as a threat, BTW), just out of plain old fashioned correctness. Hell, > I'd be willing to code a patch for it at this point if I knew what the > fsck I was doin'...
Most people are not arguing that the patch is useless. It isn't, it prevents accidental destruction of a disk. If it is worth the space in the kernel for that added layer of protection against brogen programs is for the kerlen gods to decide.
What it does not do is provide protection against malicious destruction of a disk. To destroy the disk you need root before the patch and root after the patch and that is it. The recent proliferation of rather complex exploits of holes in programs shows that even problems that are hard to exploit will be exploited. Using direct io to destroy the bios/disk/whatnot with direct io is not beyond their reach I suspect.
What really annoys me is that software commands can cause permanent damage without any physical actions on the unit.
Peter -- Peter Svensson ! Pgp key available by finger, fingerprint: <petersv@psv.nu> ! 8A E9 20 98 C1 FF 43 E3 07 FD B9 0A 80 72 70 AF <petersv@df.lth.se> ! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Remember, Luke, your source will be with you... always...
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