Design goals of the dynamic loader.

[Florian Weimer]

* Carlos O'Donell:

> The design goal of the dynamic loader is to consume correctly formed
> ELF files and to assemble an in-memory image of the application for
> execution by the operating system and hardware.
>
> The dynamic loader will not assume the ELF files are corrupt, and
> can proceed directly to use any of the information provided and
> encoded in the format in order to carry out it's operations as
> quickly and efficiently as possible.
>
> The dynamic loader implementation will be as minimal as possible
> to support auditing, code coverage, unit testing, and regression
> testing. This means that any added code that is not part of the
> above purposes goes against the design goals of the dynamic loader.

Grudgingly, I agree.

> There are no security risks in running this way.

Correct, and I really hope it stays this way.  There is considerable
interest in implementing code signing, but I have philosophical
objects to that because it can only be used to take away freedoms from
users (and device owners).