[CLUE-Tech] Sysadmin Access

[Brandon N]

--- Keith Hellman <kehellman at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Let's not kid ourselves about encryption/zip disks solving the
> root-access
> problem. root just writes a little ol' kernel module that inspects
> uid/pid
> on each sys_write() call and (for your particular user/your
> decryption
> program ) copies the data elsewhere.  The minute you decrypt that
> 1024bit
> protected file, it will be his.  Likely to happen?  Not - because
> most
> (IMHO) S/As are respectable people.  But is this scenario plausible? 
> Very
> - there is no protection for a malicious or ethically challenged
> root.
> 
> If you want privacy or require confidentiality, get a notebook and
> keep it
> off the net.

I don't think the intent of the above ideas was to prevent any and all
access, it's basically to lessen the temptation.  it's one thing to
peep at an openly accessable file on the system to see how much your
boss made last year, it's quite another to write a kernel module to
monitor thier actions.  The primary intent of these measures, unless
you're dealing with high security issues, is simply to make it beyond
simple curiosity to want to access the files.

Brandon

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