ISCSI: User authentication vs. Machine Authentication for iSCSI

["Bill Strahm" <bill@sanera.net>]

I have been fighting with this problem since I left LA.

I am not aware of any usage scenarios today where block devices are owned by
the user rather than the machine.  I will conceed that in many instances the
first thing the system does is assign the resource to a use (tape, scanner,
etc.) but the machine still owns the resource and can in fact remove it out
from under the user...

I am not to certain how I could build a trusted iSCSI environment where one
user would have no knowledge about what was happening with other users in a
malicious environment (especially where a system was participating in the
exposure of resourses).  Examples of this include things like co-located Web
hosting where a single user scans process memory looking for 1Kbit of random
data, and when finding it attempts to determine if that is the private key
of a user sharing the resource.

The reason I am bringing this up, is I am not sure trying to define security
above the machine level makes any sense for iSCSI.  Aren't most SCSI devices
owned by the Operating System not the User and partitioned out by the
Operating System to the users ?  If this is the case many of our
authentication methods simplify to simple IKE identities.

Bill