AW: [Desktop_printing] Role of CUPS and error handling

[Kurt Pfeifle]

On Friday 24 March 2006 14:47, Michael Sweet wrote:
> Robert L Krawitz wrote:
> >    From: Kurt Pfeifle <k1pfeifle at gmx.net>

[....]
> Running as an unprivileged user does not, by itself, provide that
> much extra security.  It may limit the "damage" that can be done to
> a system, but it can also open up other vulnerabilities due to the
> reduced privilege separation offered by a single account.
> 
> In the case of CUPS 1.1.x, the "RunAsUser" feature actually offered
> less security in many ways.  That coupled with the extreme loss of
> functionality were the reasons for removing it from 1.2.
> 
> If SuSE uses SELinux in their distribution, they'll be able to run
> CUPS either as root or "lp", and provide the necessary SELinux
> policies to allow it to do what it needs to do, and no more.

I'd be interested to know how much work has already been done
to marry CUPS and AppAmor on SUSE-10.1? I've not yet looked
at AppAmor, but read a few things about it; it is supposed to
be less powerful than SELinux, but much easier to handle (esp.
on the level of individual applications).

Could one of the SUSE people on this list elaborate a bit on
this?

> They 
> can also run CUPS on an alternate port like 8631 - it'll kill
> interoperability, but then they can run cupsd by default.

Cheers,
Kurt