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Message-ID: <4B198D8F.9000400@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:30:39 +0200
From: Dmitry Pryanishnikov <lynx.ripe@gmail.com>
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To: Nikolaos Rangos <nikolaos.rangos@googlemail.com>
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Cc: freebsd-security@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: FreeBSD Security Advisory FreeBSD-SA-09:16.rtld
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Hello!

> So it would be possible to set an
> environment
> variable which in this case is not UNSETABLE or SETABLE (unsetenv and
> putenv/setenv
> respectively), in my eyes this is a bad behaviour of the enviroment handling
> routines
> introduced recently in FreeBSD.

   Yes, this is a very dangerous situation when environmental variable can't 
be unset yet can be read. I would only understand that if we supported 
readonly variables. But officially we haven't them, yet virtually they can 
exist due to the corrupted environment ;(

   Generally speaking, IMHO, having destroying function that can fail is the 
thing which should be avoided if possible. Imagine free() which could fail... 
Sounds really weird, but current unsetenv() behaviour resembles that.


Sincerely, Dmitry
-- 
nic-hdl: LYNX-RIPE