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On Tue, 10 Aug 2004 04:06:14 +0300 |
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Alex Efros <powerman@×××××××.ua> wrote: |
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> -rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 804924 ___ 13 14:17 /usr/bin/gpg |
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> |
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> Yeah, I know, gpg WANT to be suid to do something with protecting |
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> it's memory, but is this really give any benefits? I mean, it's |
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> anyway possible for root to read it's memory from /dev/kmem, and |
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> it's anyway impossible to read it's memory from swap-partition for |
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> usual user because permissions for any disk partitions are 0600. |
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> |
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Well, gpg is potentially used to encrypt data that might be *very* |
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sensitive. The attack on swapped keys is of course meant to happen on |
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powered down machines (stolen or confiscated). |
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However, a kernel patch has been developed that allows any user to mlock |
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up to 32kb of memory (that's exactly the amount gpg needs). |
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It's already included in 2.6.8-rc3-mm2, so in the future the set-uid bit |
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can go probably go away - at least for modern kernels. |
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Regards |
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-- |
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