Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2000 18:13:20 -0400 From: "Jeroen C. van Gelderen" <jeroen@vangelderen.org> To: Kris Kennaway <kris@FreeBSD.org> Cc: "Andrey A. Chernov" <ache@freebsd.org>, Mark Murray <mark@grondar.za>, current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: mktemp() patch Message-ID: <3942BD80.F7354092@vangelderen.org> References: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0006101458250.61637-100000@freefall.freebsd.org>
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Kris Kennaway wrote:
>
> On Sat, 10 Jun 2000, Kris Kennaway wrote:
>
> > Given the other replies in this thread I think I'll just remove the PID
> > stuff altogether and make the temp filename only constructed from
> > alphanumeric character. The price is that there's a chance of collision
> > between two programs who mktemp() and come up with the same random
> > filename, which is a theoretical security risk (at present only something
> > with the same PID can come up with a colliding tempfile name) but the
> > probability is altogether pretty small. I'll do some calculations to
> > estimate the exact level of risk here.
>
> Actually, it's not of course a security risk in the new algorithm (this is
> mktemp() after all), but it's a potential failure mode which can cause
> applications to fail in ways they otherwise wouldn't (with some very low
> probability) on a normal system. But, I don't think it's a big enough
> problem to worry about (numbers still coming :-)
It's not a new situation, any application that can write to /tmp can
create
files that collide with other program's use of mktemp().
Cheers,
Jeroen
--
Jeroen C. van Gelderen o _ _ _
jeroen@vangelderen.org _o /\_ _ \\o (_)\__/o (_)
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