From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: cowan@mercury.ccil.org (John Cowan) Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2014 13:16:35 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] History of chown semantics In-Reply-To: References: <20140109191336.GD24304@mercury.ccil.org> <5128EE1B-28A2-4D5E-AE32-BEC6652DF1A1@tfeb.org> <20140110171819.GA14513@mercury.ccil.org> <8F58DE51-60E5-4E41-AAEF-78CAC3C08DBC@tfeb.org> <20140113070543.GC22593@mercury.ccil.org> <9D0D12F6-B198-4793-8501-E366FC7E5CB1@tfeb.org> <20140113161506.GA31756@mercury.ccil.org> Message-ID: <20140113181635.GA12718@mercury.ccil.org> SZIGETI Szabolcs scripsit: > Well, with the same reasoning, we don't need passwords or protection > bits on files, since I can always take a piece of steel pipe and beat > the owner, until he gives out the data, so why bother? More like beating my argument with a pipe than the owner. > Blocking chown for general users is one level of several controls. Its specific purpose was to make per-user quotas practical, but since per-user quotas are as dead as the dodo, it no longer serves any known purpose. Yes, it blocks a particularly crude substitute for MAC in the now-unusual case of true timesharing as opposed to single-user clients and single-purpose servers. But really it is nothing but security by ceremonial. A better case could be made that it should require root privilege to perform chmod, or at least any chmod that widens access. -- You are a child of the universe no less John Cowan than the trees and all other acyclic http://www.ccil.org/~cowan graphs; you have a right to be here. cowan at ccil.org --DeXiderata by Sean McGrath