[erlang-questions] Preventing calling some functions

[Mazen Harake]

Hej,

As Zoltan is pointing out and IMHO I don't see any benefit at all in 
"protecting" the system from "bad" plugins, I would rather restrict the 
application itself. If you allow plugins that will provide some kind of 
RPC like feature or a server of some sort etc then I can understand but 
my point was simply that if you are just making a plugin-system for your 
application then restricting it that way just cripples it and doesn't 
give any additional "security". Proprietary software I can understand 
more if you want to limit but still this is not giving you very much 
benefit anyway since malicious code can be put in there anyway.

So on the first count; I understand what you mean but I disagree that it 
should be handled on that level. I would put it on the admin's 
responsibility to use "safe" plugins instead.
On the second count; the same really, you harm (restriction harms) more 
then you benefit IMHO.

Anyway... my 2 cents. I was just curious :)

BR,

/Mazen

On 13/12/2009 11:55, Zoltan Lajos Kis wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I don't see why I should have more trust and confidence in the creator 
> of the server application itself then in the creator of a plugin.
> If I want to restrict a plugin from doing something particular on my 
> machines, I would restrict the server itself in the first place.
>
> Your second point sounds like "defensive programming". See: 
> http://www.erlang.se/doc/programming_rules.shtml#HDR11
>
> Regards,
> Zoltan.
>
> Vasilij Savin wrote:
>> Hej Mazen,
>>
>> Actually there several valid reason for restricting access.
>>
>> First of all, security, you do not want every plugin to be able to 
>> access
>> sensitive services to prevent malicious sabotage through plugins.
>>
>> Secondly, the quality of plugins is not guaranteed and they might
>> inadvertently crash the system due to bugs in them.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Vasilij Savin
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Dec 13, 2009 at 8:49 AM, Mazen Harake <
>> mazen.harake@REDACTED> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I'm curious to why you want to have this restriction in place? The only
>>> thing I can come up with is if you have a proprietary reason. If you 
>>> don't
>>> then I am _really_ curious because I don't see why restricting a 
>>> user to do
>>> what ever he/she wants is of any benefit (assuming that we are 
>>> talking about
>>> plugins now)?
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>>
>>> /Mazen
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 10/12/2009 13:06, Kiran Khaladkar wrote:
>>>
>>>> hi,
>>>> I have a server written in which i allow erlang plugins also. But the
>>>> problem is i dont want the plugin code the call certain functions 
>>>> such as
>>>> 'gen_tcp:listen' etc .. The plugin writer should not be able to 
>>>> call certain
>>>> functions thought he might know all the erlang lib.
>>>> Can anyone suggest a way to do such a thing??
>>>> regards,
>>>>
>>>> ________________________________________________________________
>>>> erlang-questions mailing list. See http://www.erlang.org/faq.html
>>>> erlang-questions (at) erlang.org
>>>>
>>>>
>>> ________________________________________________________________
>>> erlang-questions mailing list. See http://www.erlang.org/faq.html
>>> erlang-questions (at) erlang.org
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>
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