What's the policy about capabilities for executables in Arch packages?
I _guess_ that capabilities are used to avoid SUID binaries when this is secure.
well, also, unless you set capabilities on the executable a process can't have capabilities when a non-root process execs the executable -- that is until the ambient capabilities are supported in the kernel and systemd https://lwn.net/Articles/651052/ (afaik in 4.3)
I'm asking since in my setup I'm running wpa_supplicant as the 'nobody' user, but I let it keep the NET_ADMIN and NET_RAW capabilities (excerpt from the .service file):
Read the caveat here: https://w1.fi/cgit/hostap/plain/wpa_supplicant/README . Basically, you'll need a special user/group for executing /usr/bin/wpa_supplicant.
right, I think that too would need to be done in a proper package. I'd rather make it 750, and root/wpa_supplicant
In general, why is this necessary? What kind of attack (besides DoS) is possible against wpa_supplicant?
there have been buffer overflows etc. in wpa supplicant, not good for a root process. https://www.google.com/search?q=wpa_supplicant+CVE&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 -- damjan