next up previous contents
Next: Hardcoded Mechanisms Up: Linux Legacy Previous: User Capabilities   Contents

Inheritance Algorithm

Linux capability inheritance algorithm is presented in Subsection 4.2.9 and is implemented in the function compute_creds contained in the source file fs/exec.c. Effectively, the only thing it does, in the current Linux capability model implementation, is to ensure that root owned processes have all privileges and that processes owned by anyone else have none. LinSec implementation carried out substantial changes of the algorithm, as specified in the Subsection 4.2.9.