Re: Design principles and ethics

[Tom Bachmann]

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Jonathan S. Shapiro wrote:
> Your user shell is the parent of /sbin/passwd when you
> execute /sbin/passwd. It is entirely proper that /sbin/passwd should not
> trust its parent.
> 

Interesting, this opens (for me) a completely new view to confinement:
it is needed to run programs more privileged than the user. This should
simplify the task of finding an example where your kind of confinement
is needed.

Still, the passwd example is broken: it only does not work because the
file contains entries of other users, too. I would make the file local
to each shell. So in fact, it could just contain a plaintext password
the user can change with an ordinary editor.
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