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From: ed@mtxinu.UUCP (Ed Gould)
Newsgroups: net.micro.68k,net.arch
Subject: Re: SUID Patent
Message-ID: <137@mtxinu.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 1-Oct-86 18:17:03 EDT
Article-I.D.: mtxinu.137
Posted: Wed Oct  1 18:17:03 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Oct-86 01:33:06 EDT
References: <508@elmgate.UUCP> <64@mit-prep.ARPA> <15665@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <4794@ukma.uky.csnet> <404@vaxb.calgary.UUCP>
Reply-To: ed@mtxinu.UUCP (Ed Gould)
Organization: mt Xinu, Berkeley, CA
Lines: 31
Keywords: (SUID Patent)
Xref: mnetor net.micro.68k:1303 net.arch:3176

>> The first time I hears of the SUID I thought "what a nifty general
>> way to do JACCT"...
>
>The Kronos operating system for the CDC 6000 also had things similar to
>the SUID bit. An system command could have various special "entry points"
>that gave them special priviledges even when run by ordinary users. ...
>
>As far as I can see, the only innovation in UNIX SUID stuff is that the
>priviledges inherited can be those of any user, not just some "super user",
>as determined by file ownership. Personally, I don't this this ought to be 
>enough to justify a patent.

Lots of people have given examples of things that other systems did that
are subsumed by the set-uid bit.  The examples vary fairly widely,
but they seem to have a common thread:  There have been ways to do
priveliged functions in the past, so what's so new about set-uid?

It seems to me that what's new is the complete generalization of privilege.
In the Kronos example, above, note that a "system command could have...".
This allows the (necessarily) privileged system maintainers to designate
a privileged program.  Set-uid allows *any* user to say "during the
execution of this program, which *I* have so designated, you may have
*my* permissions."

Is there a feature elsewhere that allows this?

-- 
Ed Gould                    mt Xinu, 2560 Ninth St., Berkeley, CA  94710  USA
{ucbvax,decvax}!mtxinu!ed   +1 415 644 0146

"A man of quality is not threatened by a woman of equality."