Makan Pourzandi

This article presents a Linux kernel module capable of verifying digital signatures of ELF binaries before running them. This kernel module is available under the GPL license at http://sourceforge.net/projects/disec, and has been successfully tested for kernel 2.5.66 and above. Why Check the Signature of Your Binaries Before Running Them? The problem with blindly running executables is that you are never sure they actually do what you think they are supposed to do (and nothing more). Viruses spread so much on Microsoft Windows systems mainly because users are frantic to execute whatever they receive, especially if the title is appealing. The LoveLetter virus, with over 2.5 million machines infected, is a famous illustration of this. Yet Linux is unfortunately not immune to malicious code either. By executing unknown and untrusted code, users are exposed to a wide ran... (more)

Trusting Computing on Linux

In an era where everybody is connected to a potentially harmful Internet with an increasing number of complex and distributed applications, controlling what the computers do has become significantly harder. At the core, simple actions (executing software, e-commerce, etc.) rely on trust relationships; what if your computer (or the merchant's) has been compromised and alters your perception of reality? Indeed, at the beginning, Neo did not know there was a Matrix because he trusted everything he saw... Closer to our world, and without being paranoid, one of the first actions intr... (more)