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Date:      Wed, 16 Jan 2002 20:10:13 +0200
From:      Ruslan Ermilov <ru@FreeBSD.ORG>
To:        Paul Richards <paul@freebsd-services.com>, Brian Somers <brian@freebsd-services.com>
Cc:        Murray Stokely <murray@FreeBSD.ORG>, freebsd-qa@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Changes to man(1)
Message-ID:  <20020116201013.M13904@sunbay.com>
In-Reply-To: <200201161759.g0GHxwL81019@hak.lan.Awfulhak.org> <1011203704.2163.10.camel@lobster.originative.co.uk>
References:  <murray@FreeBSD.ORG> <20020115234038.GR6073@windriver.com> <200201161759.g0GHxwL81019@hak.lan.Awfulhak.org> <20020115234038.GR6073@windriver.com> <1011203704.2163.10.camel@lobster.originative.co.uk>

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Paul Richards and Brian Somers, after probably talking to each other,
wrote simultaneously:

On Wed, Jan 16, 2002 at 05:55:03PM +0000, Paul Richards wrote:
> On Tue, 2002-01-15 at 23:40, Murray Stokely wrote:
> >   The release engineers would really like to see Ruslan's latest
> > changes to man(1) in FreeBSD 4.5.  This change closes a number of
> > potential security holes that could allow privilege escalation.
> > Please help us look over the recent commit to -CURRENT before we allow
> > this to be MFCed.  Here are the relevant commits from Ruslan :
> 
> I don't think this should go into -stable.
> 
> It's still a contentious issue in -current and is a significant change
> to the historical behaviour of FreeBSD and therefore not something that
> should be included in a point release.
> 
> Unless I'm missing something, it's also not a major security whole, the
> worst that can happen is that fake manpages can be created. That's
> definately significant and I support the tightening in -current but it's
> not a critical enough fix to warrant such a major change to a -stable
> branch.
> 
Having catpages is optional, and I wouldn't call it a major change,
especially that good and secure alternatives for creating catpages
were provided.

On Wed, Jan 16, 2002 at 05:59:58PM +0000, Brian Somers wrote:
[...]
> I don't think this is -stable material (it changes system behaviour).
> 
> I also think that putting something this size into the system at this 
> point in the release cycle should at least warrant another RC.
> 
> I also don't like this new (well, old) mechanism.  Instead, I think 
> man(1) should be fixed so that as soon as any of the default things 
> like macro packages and man directories are altered, it drops all 
> privileges.  Is there a problem with doing it that way instead ?
> 
Please see

http://security-archive.merton.ox.ac.uk/security-audit-200010/0022.html

for all other possible pitfalls.

But yes, I agree this shouldn't go into -STABLE at this point, because
I'm not sure we couldn't find a better solution.

<PS>
Still want to MFC -m option change.
</PS>


Cheers,
-- 
Ruslan Ermilov		Oracle Developer/DBA,
ru@sunbay.com		Sunbay Software AG,
ru@FreeBSD.org		FreeBSD committer,
+380.652.512.251	Simferopol, Ukraine

http://www.FreeBSD.org	The Power To Serve
http://www.oracle.com	Enabling The Information Age

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