About Archive Tags RSS Feed

 

Adopt a less marital tone.

13 April 2008 21:50

If you upload a new package to the Debian archive which contains a setuid or setgid binary please please ask for a security audit, or carry out one yourself.

I certainly accept that the security audit project webpages are not terribly current, and the mailing list is essentially dead, but there are people, such as myself, who would gladly look at your package. All you have to do is ask.

When I see two packages in testing with trivialy obvious security bugs it just makes me wonder why we bother.

I'm going to take this chance to restate my hardline position on package maintainence - even though it might not be directly applicable - If you cannot program/debug/handle the language a package is developed in you shouldn't maintain it.

Too often I've seen signs of this; somebody maintaining a C-based program but unable to program in C. Why?

I wonder if we could have a policy / guideline that any new setuid/setgid application must have at least two maintainers, or a documented audit prior to acceptance? Hard to manage but I think it would be useful even if it didn't catch everything. Some bugs such as #475747 (lovely number!) are trivial to discover.

ObQuote: Dangerous Liaisons

| No comments