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PlanetLab Creates a More Advanced Sudo

Posted by timothy on from the world-will-beat-a-path-to-your-door dept.

angry tapir writes "Researchers at the PlanetLab global research network have developed a potential replacement for the widely used Unix sudo tool, called Vsys, that will offer administrators far greater control over what end users can and can't access. Vsys is similar to sudo, except it offers finer-grained access to system resources. PlanetLab created Vsys as a way to allow its researchers to access low-level network functionality so they could develop new network technologies — overlay networks, user-level file systems, virtual switches — while their experimental work remained safely isolated from other users."

11 of 153 comments (clear)

  1. So my one question by JoshuaZ · · Score: 4, Funny

    Will this mean they'll need to update the xkcd shirts?

  2. Most admins ignore sudo's granularity by profplump · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Most admins ignore sudo's existing granularity, so why would they want an even more granular system? I'm not saying this new system has no uses -- clearly it does or no one would have built it -- but it's ridiculous to claim that it's likely to replace sudo in common usage when 75+% of admins have never changed the the default sudoers file, let alone wanted more even more granular control.

    1. Re:Most admins ignore sudo's granularity by ChrisMaple · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If you've ever worked with someone who's productive but untrustworthy, you know that some people need to be precisely limited in their access. I know it's frustrating when I have to ask for permission just to do my job, but it's better than the guy who frequently crashes the servers to do so, or to have an unqualified person adding untested changes to a design.

      --
      Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
  3. Re:I don't need more. by retchdog · · Score: 3, Informative

    uh, yeah, that's kind of the point... vsys (ideally) won't do "more". it's not intended for users who own/admin their system.

    --
    "They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
  4. Hilarious by timeOday · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Finer grained!

    The heaping myriad of security tools and controls is already beyond what anybody can properly utilize, by a huge margin.

  5. Executable configuration? by Max+Romantschuk · · Score: 3, Insightful

    With Vsys, administrators can create scripts, called extensions, that can carefully detail which user actions are permissible. Extensions can be written in any programming language. The extensions are executable files.

    I'm sure it's flexible, but wouldn't executable configuration be a potential source of programming errors, and thus an additional attack vector? If the extension is done correctly I assume all is well, but how do you make sure it is? Or are you better off using SELinux? (Which isn't user friendly either, but at least paranoid...)

    --
    .: Max Romantschuk :: http://max.romantschuk.fi/
    1. Re:Executable configuration? by phantomfive · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This solves a problem that probably exists nowhere outside PlanetLab: trying to segregate users who are trying to build experimental networks. Now, you might ask, why not just buy a different computer for each experimenter? And indeed that is what I would do, except, these experimenters are trying to experiment on clusters.

      So they are trying to segregate the capabilities of various users over many nodes in a cluster, whom they rent time to in a shared system. So there you have it. If you are trying to rent time in a shared cluster to network researchers, this is the tool for you!!

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  6. Imitation of Solaris? by guruevi · · Score: 3, Informative

    Solaris (and other RBAC's) allow you to remove root and have very fine-grained controls over who does what and where even in virtual machines (containers). This problem has already been solved before many, many times so I doubt there is a need for yet another system. Even sudo itself allows for very fine grained controls.

    --
    Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
  7. Re:I don't need more. by cowbud · · Score: 3, Funny

    They should have called the command vudo.

  8. Re:I don't need more. by SigmundFloyd · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I know what sudo does.

    If you knew what sudo does, you wouldn't have written this:

    "su -c $blah" should be all anyone needs.

    --
    Knowledge is power; knowledge shared is power lost.
  9. Subject to race conditions -- lame by plsuh · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Folks,

    Does no one remember 2007? Bob Watson presented a paper on exploiting concurrency to break all kinds of things like systrace back then, complete with example code. Vsys is the same kind of thing -- it has processes executing in an outside space where you can have a race condition and force the parameters to change after the clearance check but before it actually does the work. See:

    http://www.watson.org/~robert/2007woot/

    --Paul