[cap-talk] Concrete application, WebCVOS (was: Selling capabilities programming)

[Jonathan S. Shapiro]

On Thu, 2007-07-19 at 12:06 -0700, David Wagner wrote:
> Jonathan Shapiro writes:
> >Mark Miller wrote:
> >> If you still think it doesn't seem that hard, how are you going to
> >> intercept all OS traps on Windows without cooperation from Microsoft?
> >> AFAIK, there's no ptrace equivalent exposed to Windows programmers.
> >
> >No, but there are plenty of ways to hook that API. Rootkits often do
> >this.
> 
> Yes, but I don't think they're useful for what James wants, namely,
> for sandboxing.  There are thousands of OS traps on Windows...

I agree with all that you say. I wasn't proposing this as a solution. I
was merely noting that it is possible to hook system calls.

> My understanding is that many of the
> mechanisms that are ordinarily used to hook that API are bypassable:
> if the application is malicious, it can bypass the hook.

Yes. The problem with having 1000 system calls is that the Microsoft
team can't sandbox them effectively either.

shap