Bugtraq: Re: Race condition in "rm -r"

[abs () MONO ORG (David Brownlee)]

On Sat, 6 May 2000, Glynn Clements wrote:

> > Also affected:
> >
> >   chmod, chown, chgrp.  (Probably; this is guesswork.)
> ... and every other program that modifies the filesystem in any way,
> unless it jumps through the same hoops.
>
> If, that is, you let them near directories with unsafe permissions.
>
> In the long term, there are three main options:
>
> 1. Abolish symlinks. This might be considered overkill, though.
>
> 2. Write every program as if it was a /tmp cleaner. I.e. never pass
> full pathnames to system calls, but chdir() down one level at a time
> from "/", [lf]stat()ing as you go and never following symlinks, then
> open("./filename"). In which case, you may as well abolish symlinks.
>
> 3. Don't do dangerous things in world-writable directories. Better
> still, get rid of world-writable directories altogether; it isn't that
> difficult. IOW, fix the bug, not the symptoms.
        4. Add an option to not traverse symlinks in system calls.
           Call realpath() on initial argument before setting.

                David/absolute
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