Re: using segmentation in the kernel

[Al Viro <viro@ftp.linux.org.uk>]

On Tue, Oct 11, 2005 at 10:24:46PM +0200, Alon Bar-Lev wrote:
> Brian Gerst wrote:
> >Jonathan M. McCune wrote:
> >
> >>Hello,
> >>
> >Why send the kernel back to the 2.0 days?  There is no valid reason for 
> >doing this with they way x86 segmentation works, which is why it was 
> >done away with in 2.1.
> >
> 
> But with segmentation you can set code to be read-only, 
> disallow execution from stack, separate modules so that they 
> will not affect kernel and more...

You do realize that it's a BS, don't you?

* attacker that would rewrite kernel code can switch a pointer to method in
any of the method tables (or pointer to the entire method table, while we are
at it).
* overwriting return address is trivial if you got stack smashing and there
is a plenty of interesting functions in the kernel ready to elevate priveleges
* modules rely on practically complete access to kernel data structures, so
no amount of playing with rings will change anything for them.
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