Mail Archives: cygwin/1997/12/04/22:51:14
On Thursday, 4 December 1997 12:31, cgf AT bbc DOT com [SMTP:cgf AT bbc DOT com]
wrote:
> In article <34856623 DOT C5226DBC AT twinspot DOT net>,
> Tomas Fasth <tomas DOT fasth AT twinspot DOT net> wrote:
> >Modifying the exe file "on-the-fly" for environmental settings is not
to
> >recommend. Two of the reasons I can think of is:
> >
> >* Security considerations in a multiuser / multiprocess environment.
>
> What security considerations are there that are not also present with
> any other scheme, whether it is using extended attributes or setting
options
> in the registry? You would have to have the right privileges to
change
> the binary.
Modification of binary files in a multi-user environment is not a good
thing. The registry is there, you may as well use it. Something I have
not yet seen mentioned is the fact that each user can have a separate
profile in the registry, making it easy for each user to have different
settings. Modifying the binary might get just a little frustrating if
someone else keeps changing it to the way THEY like things (unless you
want to fill your hdd with multiple copies of executables)
Also, for a user to be able to modify a binary, they would need write
access to that binary. I suspect this would cause nightmares for sys
admins, not to mention the possibility of adding back doors directly
into the binaries themselves. I bet a normal user can't modify any of
the shell binaries in a standard Unix setup.
>
> >* Will cause problem in environments with active virus protection.
>
> How does a virus detection program detect the difference between
installing
> a new version of bash or changing a byte in the existing file?
SOME virus protection schemes are now including a mechansim whereby any
changes to an executable file will raise a warning. Norman Anitvirus is
one in particular that I have used that does this. It's a bit of a pain
if you forget to disable that feature before installing any new
software. If that installation tries to upgrade, for example, a dll
file, as most of them seem to do these days, the Virus detection kicks
in and gives you a warning.
The same thing would apply to modification of the executables as
suggested here.
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