You may be interested to know that there is currently a debate on exactly
this subject raging on the Debian Developer list. It does however seem to
have come to a conclusion after a week or so.
David
"McKown, John"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
sctr.com> cc:
Sent by: Linux Subject: Re: Stripping trailing blanks?
on 390 Port
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]
ARIST.EDU>
28/07/2003
18:47
Please respond
to Linux on 390
Port
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Guillaume Morin [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Monday, July 28, 2003 12:35 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: Stripping trailing blanks?
>
>
<snip>
>
> The problem is actually the predictible file name in a world-writable
> directory. An attacker could create a symlink with the name
> "strip.pid"
> (a pid is actually pretty easy to predict, and you can always
> create as
> much symlinks as you want) pointing to one of your files and when
> launching the command you would overwrite the file. It is really a
> disaster if root runs this command.
>
> Guillaume
Understand increases, thanks. I guess it would be "better" if, somehow,
/tmp
could refer to a different filesystem or directory for each individual
user.
UNIX on OS/390 does have something like this. A different kind of symlink
which is dependant on the userid. Or perhaps, setup /tmp/$USER for every
valid use and don't have /tmp be world-writable. I wonder why Linux doesn't
do that? It should be easy to change the scripts that use /tmp to use
/tmp/$USER and to change the useradd program to create /tmp/$USER when it
creates /home/$USER and make it have the correct permissions. Or even
create
/home/$USER/tmp and symlink it to /tmp/$USER. Just some weird thoughts from
a "legacy" sysprog. I may well be all wet.
--
John McKown
Senior Systems Programmer
UICI Insurance Center
Applications & Solutions Team
+1.817.255.3225
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