[MPlayer-dev-eng] [PATCH] adjusting nice level from config/command line

[Wojtek Kaniewski]

On Mon, 27 May 2002, Brian J. Murrell wrote:
> > so what? i'm the only user of my workstation. no one else has an account
> > here. no one else has physical access to the box. no one can log in from
> > outside. so why should i bother about getting root from suid mplayer?
> 
> That is a very bad attitude.  It is exactly that attitude that leads
> to insecure software -- something that is plaguing MS right now.

maybe just unix philosophy isn't right enough for today's applications?

> If you are the only user on your workstation and you have the root
> password then why don't you just run MPlayer as root

because it's uncomfortable. you could decode some video stream to raw
rgb frames and put them on the screen as well, but i suppose you don't
watch movies that way. yes, i could run mplayer as root, but that's not
the way.

> instead of making
> improper and insecure patches against MPlayer and submitting them for
> hopes that they be included in the main source.

could you point any errors in this patch? i don't understand why it is
,,improper and insecure''. increasing priority was one of the examples.
it can be also used to decrease priority when decoding video or audio
stream to a file.

> You may be a smart enough cookie to realize how insecure the
> implementation is but a more naive user on a machine with multiple
> user accounts may not realize it and go enabling software that makes
> for a real easy job of r00ting his box.

the documentation already points that making mplayer a suid executable
is insecure on DGA's example. well, why don't just remove DGA support?
isn't it improper and insecure?

besides, i assumed that _every_ user taking advantage of increasing
mplayer's priority using ,,-nice -19'' will know what are the risks
of giving suid.

regards,
wojtek