retitle 709754 Erlang runtime implicitly starts a epmd daemon reassign 709754 erlang severity 709754 important affects 709754 ejabberd tag 709754 +security +upstream +confirmed thanks
On Thu, 30 May 2013 10:57:36 +0200 Andreas Beckmann <[email protected]> wrote: > On 2013-05-30 10:26, Felix Geyer wrote: > > ejabberd does use invoke-rc.d. > > epmd is spawned when calling ejabberdctl which ejabberd does > > in postinst and prerm. > > a package is not supposed to start daemons upon installation/... in a > way circumenting policy-rc.d > > > Killing epmd may be dangerous when there are other erlang programs > > running, see: > > http://www.ejabberd.im/epmd > > How is this supposed to work in a multi-user environment? The first > user running some erlang program starts a daemon? > > And later on root installs ejabberd which uses a resolver controlled > by an untrusted user? Yes, this sucks but that's how the Erlang runtime works, and this is an upstream issue. I've discussed these matters with the Erlang package maintainer, and he agreed with you on that this needs to be fixed but unfortunately there seems no bullet-proof solution short of convincing upstream to do somethis about the situation: in theory, we could create an init script to turn epmd into a real daemon and then make ejabberd and other affected software hard-depend on it via their respective init-scripts, but this won't prevent that maliscious user from starting epmd before a proper daemon is run. Anyway, by agreemend with the Erlang package maintainer, I'm reassigning this bug to the erlang package, so let's proceed in that new context. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected]
