On Thu, Nov 30, 2000 at 12:05:58PM -0800, kmself@ix.netcom.com wrote: > Response redirected to list. > Follow-up set to list.
Yea, sorry. I would suggest that the list set Reply-To, but I'd just get flamed > > It depends on how much you trust gnupg. Setting it SUID means that is > > can lock pages sure. But it also means that it has to be really secure > > - if you are running a single-user box then I shouldn't think you're > > too bothered that someone could find an exploit - but by default it > > should be secure. > > First, this is somewhat nonresponsive to my question: is there a > specific reason why gpg was not SUID? It's possible that postinstall > configs didn't run on it, I've had a couple of apt problems in the past > day or so. I'm not involved in the package, but on my box it is SUID: -rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 563624 Oct 17 17:35 /usr/bin/gpg I have gnupg 1.0.4-1 > Second, what do you want to trust: a single SUID program, earmarked as > a high-priority security issue, or every application running on the box > with access to priviledged memory. Applications with access to gnupg's memory are either running as root or as the user owner of the gnupg process. You must trust root, and I don't think that a bad process running as you would read gnupg's memory (strace the shell and hook exec, for example). The issue is the swap; locked pages are never swapped out, so the disk never seeks them. If someone could pick over your swap then they could pickout sectors with high-entropy and possibly they would be your privkey. On a single-user box SUID gpg is a good thing - on a multi-user box you might (rightly) be worried about another SUID binary. AGL -- If you think things can't get worse it's probably only because you lack sufficient imagination.
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