full-disclosure - Re: Symlink vulnerabilities

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Message-ID: <CALx_OUAfWpZjSotdJcT0L1JcS2XErmzwa82hi8FpOG37YNuBBg@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2011 02:26:33 -0700
From: Michal Zalewski <lcamtuf@...edump.cx>
To: James Condron <james@...o-internet.org.uk>
Cc: full-disclosure@...ts.grok.org.uk
Subject: Re: Symlink vulnerabilities

> Actually, no; per user /tmp could only be accomplished, without a major redesign and without breaking almost every application

[citation needed] ;-)

Only a fraction of apps uses /tmp... vendors can fix their own
distros: grepping for "/tmp" isn't complicated, and almost every
package usually ships with a handful of vendor-specific diffs anyway.

You will break some third-party stuff people download from the
Internet, but that's a self-correcting problem, and not exactly a
horrible prospect: Linux distros break crappy software with almost
every major release anyway, often due to far more fundamental changes
(e.g. different /dev or /proc semantics, or moving libraries and
includes around).

The namespace / pseudo-fs approach is fairly ancient and works, but
it's sort of ugly: it makes the filesystem behave counterintuitively
in the rare case somebody actually has a legit use for /tmp. Not a big
deal, but seems like an overcomplicated solution IMO.

/mz

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