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Re: Task emulation vectors




On Jun 18, 2007, at 04:38 , Mo McRoberts wrote:

Hi Alexei,

Many thanks for the pointer (no pun intended).

A Google search for "Mac OS X system call emulation" leads to http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301327 ("About the security content of the Mac OS X 10.3.9 Update"):

"The kernel contains syscall emulation functionality that is not used in Mac OS X. Insufficient validation of an input parameter list could result in a heap overflow and a local denial of service through a kernel panic. The issue is addressed by removing the syscall emulation functionality."

I'm not entirely sure how I missed that! I possibly focussed too much on Darwin/XNU rather than Mac OS X, though. Lesson learned for the future, I think.

I'm not sure what you mean here. The removed code was in XNU (osfmk/ kern/syscall_emulation.c, in source trees prior to 10.3.9).


Glancing at the Darwin sources confirm that the syscall emulation code was removed between 10.3.8 and 10.3.9.

That's a bit of a shame, really. Strikes me somewhat as akin to amputating an arm because a little finger's been broken, but then ours is not to reason why.

I think it's more akin to removing an appendix to avoid serious death :-}. It was not being used and it was a security problem.


Justin

--
Justin C. Walker, Curmudgeon at Large
Institute for the Absorption of Federal Funds
-----------
I'm beginning to like the cut of his jibberish.
-----------



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References: 
 >Task emulation vectors (From: Mo McRoberts <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Task emulation vectors (From: Alexei Kosut <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Task emulation vectors (From: Mo McRoberts <email@hidden>)



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