Policy for storage devices

[Sean Middleditch]

On Thu, 2004-10-14 at 16:50 -0400, John (J5) Palmieri wrote:
> On Thu, 2004-10-14 at 16:39 -0400, David Zeuthen wrote:
> 
> > 
> > However, the point of hal is to merge *all* interesting information
> > about a device and this does include policy. If and when we get a public
> > device information file repository we need to ensure that these files
> > doesn't contain policy.
> 
> Hmm, interesting point.  Perhaps we should jail off policy so that
> informational fdi files and policy fdi files can not be contained in the
> same file but since policy is keyed off of device information this
> wouldn't add that much more security.  (i.e. a malicious fdi file
> changes all removable media to be marked as internal and get internal
> drive privileges).  I would guess the best thing to do is if we add a
> tool to easily add fdi files to do some heuristics and warn the user if
> the fdi file looks fishy.  Otherwise the danger is no worse than
> installing an untrusted RPM from some random site.  You need to be root
> to install fdi files so it is a do it at your own risk sort of thing.  

Couldn't we just add something to the FDI file to mark it as policy vs
information?  Sort of like how the .desktop format lets you specify
different sections?  Maybe just a simple attribute like
type="information" vs type="policy" (with the default being information,
for backwards compatibility), such that you can easily guarantee that a
file either is information only, or isn't.

> 
-- 
Sean Middleditch <elanthis at awesomeplay.com>
AwesomePlay Productions, Inc.

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