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Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2013 11:49:13 +0400
From: gremlin@...mlin.ru
To: oss-security@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: Re: CVE request: psi+ stores the cache file as world-readable

On 26-Feb-2013 19:50:48 -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:

 >>> Psi+, a fork of psi, stores its files in ~/.cache/psi+ as
 >>> world-readable.

 >> That's normal - users' home directories are normally accessible
 >> only by users themselves, and never by othe users:
 >> gremlin@...n:~ > ls -ld .
 >> drwx-----x 47 gremlin users 20480 2013-02-26 17:48 ./

 > That is one possible convention of many for structuring user
 > home directory permissions. It is certainly not universal, and
 > no software should assume that home directory permissions are
 > structured that way when deciding on the permissions of other
 > files created under the user's home directory.

If something is stored in the user's home directory, it's under
user's responsibility.

 > Some of us who have been using UNIX for long enough that we
 > originally learned the permissions system when sharing was
 > emphasized over security do still use world-readable home
 > directories, with specific directories under it restricted.

Yes, I also did that - in previous century :-)

 > We would like software, when creating private files, to not
 > assume that it can be careless about permissions of individual
 > files because "of course" the user's home directory is private.

The safer way will be not assuming anything, but instead enforce
it - at least using the restrictive umask like 077.

gremlin@...n:~ > ls -ld .ssh
drwx------ 2 gremlin users 4096 2012-12-24 12:56 .ssh/

Just in case...

-- 
Alexey V. Vissarionov aka Gremlin from Kremlin <gremlin ПРИ gremlin ТЧК ru>
GPG key ID: 0xEF3B1FA8, keyserver: hkp://subkeys.pgp.net
GPG key fingerprint: 8832 FE9F A791 F796 8AC9 6E4E 909D AC45 EF3B 1FA8

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