The original justification for cap_task_kill() was as follows:
check_kill_permission() does appropriate uid equivalence checks.
However with file capabilities it becomes possible for an
unprivileged user to execute a file with file capabilities
resulting in a more privileged task with the same uid.
However now that cap_task_kill() always returns 0 (permission
granted) when p->uid==current->uid, the whole hook is worthless,
and only likely to create more subtle problems in the corner cases
where it might still be called but return -EPERM. Those cases
are basically when uids are different but euid/suid is equivalent
as per the check in check_kill_permission().
One example of a still-broken application is 'at' for non-root users.
This patch removes cap_task_kill().
Signed-off-by: Serge Hallyn <serge@hallyn.com> Acked-by: Andrew G. Morgan <morgan@kernel.org> Earlier-version-tested-by: Luiz Fernando N. Capitulino <lcapitulino@mandriva.com.br> Acked-by: Casey Schaufler <casey@schaufler-ca.com> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>