Bitfrost and dual-boot

[david at lang.hm]

On Thu, 29 May 2008, Jameson "Chema" Quinn wrote:

> 
>> if you run everything as user olpc and user olpc can become root without a
>> password, getting olpc is as good as getting root.
>
>
> An arbitrary process running as user olpc should not be able to get root. My
> impression is that it cannot, currently; am I wrong?

the terminal activity can, and if it can why can't everything else use the 
same mechanism?

and there's always sudo /bin/sh available

>>
>> not to mention the fact that you would need to audit every program to see
>> what it will do with the data you feed it (if anything reads something from
>> a file and then executes arbatrary commands based on it, you've lost)
>>
>
> If it switches to run as another user (or otherwise reduces its own
> destructive capabilities) before doing so, not so. This is the principle
> that Bitfrost is built on: ways to run untrusted code.
>