Re: which do you think can provide better protection against Trojan horses?

[Paul Johnston <paul.johnston () pentest co uk>]

Hi,

> which do you think can provide better protection against Trojan horses: Access Control Lists or Capabilities?

Capabilities.

ACLs work nicely for protecting users from each other. I can put an ACL
on my department's shared drive and stop outsiders from accessing it. I
can put another ACL on the managers' folder and keep non-managers out.

But when dealing with trojan horses, we have a different security
problem than protecting users from each other. We need to protect a user
from a malicious program running under their identity.

This is where ACLs break down, as the malicious program gets all the
same rights as the user.

However, in a capabilities model, each program would only get the
absolute minimum capabilities it needs to do its job and not all the
rights of a user. A trojan horse is better contained.

Paul

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