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New Microsoft patent may put Linux security components at risk |
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Source: H Security - Posted by Alex
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Microsoft has been granted a patent on a privilege escalation system which appears to cover the functionality of PolicyKit, which is used for fine grain authorisation on Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE and other Linux systems. The patent claims in 7,617,530 appear to be for system software which, when an application needs a higher privilege level, displays a graphical list of users with the privileges required to perform the task. Selecting one of the users and entering that user's password allows the task to be performed with that users privilege.
This behaviour is very similar to that of PolicyKit, with the only apparent difference being that PolicyKit requires applications to request privileges, whereas the 7,617,350 patent allows the operating system to block a privileged action and then offer the user a way to raise their privileges.
Reports that Microsoft had patented sudo, the privilege raising utility which is used by Linux, Unix and Mac OS X operating systems, appear to be incorrect. Microsoft were previously granted a patent on sudo-like functionality in 2004 with the patent 6,775,781. Microsoft has not, to date, brought any infringement cases based on this patent.
Read this full article at H Security
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