[Info-vax] VMS and security

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2022-11-09 22:07:00 +0000, John Dallman said:

> An equivalent of chroot would require setting up new tables of symbols 
> and logicals. I don't know enough about VMS internals to know how 
> complicated that would be.

Complicated.

I looked into that a while back.

That whole area gets "entertaining", as OpenVMS assumes a whole bunch 
of stuff is system-wide, as do a number of apps and app installers, and 
assumptions can get broken.

Logical names and tables, global sections, event flag clusters, IP 
ports, mailboxes, and usernames, for instance.

Some of that can be "demoted" to a sandbox with (maybe) more logical 
name tables for each sandbox, some—like potentially permitting 
duplicate usernames and duplicate identifiers and UICs—gets more gnarly.

Symbols are already inherently process local, so those are less of an issue.

The BSD Pledge scheme is rather more feasible on a smaller budget and 
with fewer repercussions, and apps can opt into that. VSI probably 
doesn't have the budget or the schedule or the call for an overhaul of 
the scale of adding sandboxes.


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