Linus: Security is "people wanking around with their opinions"

[James Morris]

On Tuesday 02 Oct 2007 09:28:09 -0700 Peter Gutmann wrote:

> [Linus quote...]
> So the difference between them is simple: one is 'hard science'. The 
> is 'people wanking around with their opinions'."

Just to clarify: this line of discussion arose from my advocacy of the 
Linux kernel having a flexible, designed, analyzable and cohesive access 
control framework, rather than the semantically weak pile o' hooks 
provided by LSM.

Here's my posting which set Linus off, which itself is a brief summary of 
already discussed points:
http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/linux-kernel/2007/10/1/326293

This is not to argue with Linus' point here (which was tangential), just 
to clarify the context, which I suspect may also be of interest to Peter 
(at least), as I've been reading his work on the need for properly 
designed cryptographic architecture rather than e.g. simple APIs.

Unfortunately, there's some very long standing and entrenched confusion 
over SELinux: that it is a specific access control model, rather than an 
architecture.  This is somewhat our fault for not demonstrating this 
concept, and only explaining it, which may be a good lesson for others :-)


- James
-- 
James Morris
<jmorris at namei.org>

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