High Level privileges in KDE Applications

[Dario Freddi]

Hello list,

This mail is a follow-up to a conversation I had with Brandon on IRC. I am 
trying to create an API to let KDE applications acquire high level privileges 
in a secure and multiplatform way.

No, I'm not talking about sudo or running GUIs as root, that is proven to be 
completely unsafe. More about PolicyKit and the caller-helper model. It's a 
PolicyKit specific tutorial, but you can surely understand the concept better 
here: http://techbase.kde.org/Development/Tutorials/PolicyKit/Helper_HowTo

So basically our aim is to split up the standard application from an helper 
application that will perform the requested action as the privileged user. On 
Linux the authorization can be verified through PolicyKit, on Windows through 
UAC or these things I found after a lazy search: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/dd550643(VS.85).aspx .

Before starting to draft (the api will consist of just a few functions, as you 
can imagine), I wanted to have some opinions/needs of someone knowledgeable on 
the other platforms (yes, I'm poking the Mac team too), to let everyone 
implement the API easily.

The design will be very similar to solid: the main library in kdelibs, the 
various backends in kdebase/workspace.

Cheers
Dario

-- 
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Dario Freddi
KDE Developer
GPG Key Signature: 511A9A3B

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