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List:       kde-look
Subject:    Desktop Security (Was Re: C:\CoolProgs\Pretty Park.exe)
From:       Andreas Pour <pour () mieterra ! com>
Date:       2000-05-19 2:06:49
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Hi,

I'm not sure this has anything to do with kde-look, so I am
cross-posting to kde-devel.

The most destructive viruses lately have been DOS attacks.  Each user
that can execute 'ping' or anyone who can send e-mail, which is
everybody, can participate in a DOS attach as an (innocent) attacker. 
Moreover, as the KDE desktop expands into KOffice and other programs
with scripting support (like the various IRC clients), the threat of DOS
attacks (e.g., mailing everyone in an address book, or flooding a host
with UDP packets) is just as real for Linux/KDE.  Adequate security
measures need to be taken.  

Moreover, for a home user, wiping out $HOME is worse than wiping out
/usr -- all the stuff under /usr can be easily re-installed from the CD,
whereas all the valuable documents collected by the user -- and hence
user writable -- are where the value lies.  And does it matter if the
virus can't overwrite /usr/ls, when it can change PATH to have the first
directory be '/tmp/.hidden/bin' and install a trojan horse 'ls' in that
directory?

What I think KDE needs is a security architecture.  Each developer alone
cannot adequately deal with security issues, since things are very
interconnected, esp. given the KIO and KParts architectures.

If anyone is interested in working on a security architecture, please
contact me, and I can set up a mailing list kde-security or something
like that.

Ciao,

Andreas


Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> 
> John Summerfield wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > For anyone using Linux, try not to laugh too hard :-)
> >
> > We trust there's nothing in KDE that could lead to unwanted execution of
> > untrusted binaries in like manner?
> >
> > Remembering that kfm does run binaries with a single click, I wonder
> > whether there's something in the KDE API that could lead to this in the
> > same sort of way Eudora (and maybe other applications other than MS) was
> > caught out on Windows using defaults for the HTML-rendering API.
> 
> Yes, very good point.
> 
> I believe the complacancy among the Unix/Linux community regarding
> computer viruses is not justified. At the moment it is true that there
> are no wild viruses that run under Linux. It is also true that the
> Linux security model is much superior to that of Windows. But now that
> Linux is moving into the desktop environment, there is no guarantee
> that the situation will always be the same.
> 
> --
> Steven D'Aprano

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