Re: [9fans] security questions

["Devon H. O'Dell" <devon.odell@gmail.com>]

2009/4/16 Bakul Shah <bakul+plan9@bitblocks.com>:
> On Thu, 16 Apr 2009 21:25:06 EDT "Devon H. O'Dell" <devon.odell@gmail.com>  wrote:
>> That said, I don't disagree. Perhaps Plan 9's environment hasn't been
>> assumed to contain malicious users. Which brings up the question: Can
>> Plan 9 be safely run in a potentially malicious environment?  Based on
>> this argument, no, it cannot. Since I want to run Plan 9 in this sort
>> of environment (and thus move away from that assumption), I want to
>> address these problems, and I kind of feel like it's weird to be
>> essentially told, ``Don't do that.''
>
> Why not give each user a virtual plan9? Not like vmware/qemu
> but more like FreeBSD's jail(8), "done more elegantly"[TM]!
> To deal with potentially malicious users you can virtualize
> resources, backed by limited/configurable real resources.

I saw a talk about Mult at DCBSDCon. I think it's a much better idea
than FreeBSD jail(8), and its security is provable.

See also: http://mult.bsd.lv/

I do like this idea.

> The other thought that comes to mind is to consider something
> like class based queuing (from the networking world).  That
> is, allow choice of different allocation/scheduling/resource
> use policies and allow further subdivision. Then you can give
> preferential treatment to known good guys.  Other users can
> still experiment to their heart's content within the
> resources allowed them.
>
> My point being think of a consistent high level model that
> you like and then worry about implementation details.

That's also another interesting idea I hadn't considered.

Anybody else with thoughts on these?

--dho