Privilege separation
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In computer programming, privilege separation is a technique used to mitigate the potential damage of a computer security attack. In its most basic form, a computer program forks into two processes. The main program drops privileges, and the smaller program keeps privileges in order to perform a certain task. The two halves then communicate via a socket pair. Thus, any successful attack against the larger program will gain minimal access, even though the pair of programs will be capable of performing privileged operations.
[edit] See also
- Principle of least privilege
- Capability-based security
- Confused deputy problem
- Privilege escalation
- Defensive programming
- Privilege bracketing
- Privilege revocation
[edit] External links
- Theo de Raadt: Exploit Mitigation Techniques in OpenBSD slides
- Niels Provos, Markus Friedl, Peter Honeyman: Preventing Privilege Escalation paper
- Niels Provos: Privilege Separated OpenSSH project
