[Python-Dev] Re: rexec.py unuseable

[Serge Orlov]

"Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton" <lkcl at lkcl.net> wrote in message news:mailman.258.1071687992.9307.python-list at python.org...

>  in my experience (windows nt services and therefore also samba-tng's
>  services), access control lists have been an extremely successful
>  means to provide security in almost every single program in the
>  NT operating system (i don't mean XP i don't mean windows 95) for
>  almost 15 to 20 years.
>
>  it seems quite logical therefore to propose that such a successful
>  security model be adapted to fit a programming language, or at least
>  to learn from its success (and failings).

Success? It's a total failure, imho. Witness millions of troyans and worms
infiltrating windows ntfs filesystems, reading, writing, executing and deleting
files despite acls all over.
Besides you can't do certains things with pure acls. For example how
do you grant to an email program ability to read/write to one work directory
and attach and save _any_ files from anywhere by control of the user?
With capabilities you can. It's very simple. With acls alone you can't
do it at all.