[Pkg-freeipmi-devel] Bug#690040: freeipmi: Build with PIE, bindnow, openfiles with O_EXCL and check return status

[Albert Chu]

On Tue, 2012-10-09 at 17:46 -0400, Yaroslav Halchenko wrote:
> On Tue, 09 Oct 2012, Albert Chu wrote:
> > > > The default location for this library's debug dumps is /tmp.  I
> > > > admittedly chose it somewhat at random, it just felt like a decent
> > > > location. 
> > > my take on it (Dave might clarify what intention he had) was -- security
> > > precaution since wouldn't it allow an attack vector via symlinks to
> > > root-owned precious files? (e.g. an evil attacker might ln -s
> > > /etc/whateverimportant /tmp/ipmiconsole_debug) so then naive run of the
> > > ipmiconsole as root would render that file "broken"
> > Makes sense, I could see that.
> 
> 
> > > I guess ideally --debug should just take a filename as an argument... ?
> > The --debug output in the ipmiconsole tool outputs dumps to stderr.
> 
> ah ;)
> 
> > Hmmmm. What would be the best thing to do?  I'm actually liking the idea
> > of dumping to the current working directory, so that it's the
> > responsibility of the developer to know what they are doing with this
> > option.
> 
> and you are the boss here -- then O_EXCL should still be kinda useful
> to preclude those evil acts as far as I see it -- the "developer" might
> end up in /tmp after some wonder-abouts ;)
> 
> alternatively -- debug output filename could make use of mkstemp to
> craft a unique filename

Ahhh, never knew of mkstemp before.  I'll have to add that to memory :P
I was just thinking of adding a PID to the filename, so the developer
knows which run created the debug dumps.

Al

-- 
Albert Chu
chu11 at llnl.gov
Computer Scientist
High Performance Systems Division
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory