Debian Developers - Bug#238460: general: apt-get source: certain files in some packages are owned by a dif

This is Interesting: Free IT Magazines  
Home > Archive > Debian Developers > March 2004 > Bug#238460: general: apt-get source: certain files in some packages are owned by a dif





You are viewing an archived Text-only version of the thread. To view this thread in it's original format and/or if you want to reply to this thread please [click here]

Author Bug#238460: general: apt-get source: certain files in some packages are owned by a dif
Henning Makholm

2004-03-17, 4:40 pm

Scripsit Martin <broadcast@mail.ptraced.net>

> Happened when I apt-get source'ed some packages, for example, sux and
> xsu. Some of the files where owned by different UIDs other than UID 0,
> which should be the correct one, since I downloaded this as root.


In other words, a local user who happens to have the same login name
as the person who built the orig.tar.gz will have a window to insert
trojaned code in source files, if root builds packages.

The quick and easy answer is, of course, that one should *not* build
packages as root, and instead use fakeroot.

The reporter's issues could be handled more fundamentally by letting
dpkg-source extract tarfiles with "--no-same-owner". However, that
would make dpkg-source impossible, or at least difficult, to use on
non-Debian systems where /bin/tar is not the GNU implementation. We
probably do not want to go that way.

A more portable "fix" would require dpkg-source to check whether it is
root, and, if so, fork "su nobody tar -xkf -" instead of just "tar
-xkf -". But this appears to be more complex than the problem
justifies, given that trouble can be avoided completely by not doing
as root what an unprivileged account suffices for.


Do we close this bug report or reassign it (as wishlist, probably) to
dpkg?

--
Henning Makholm "I've been staying out of family
conversations. Do I get credit for that?"


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-request@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org
Sponsored Links






Free braindumps | Software forum | Database administration forum

Copyright 2003 - 2009 webservertalk.com