Re: many packages write to `temporary-file-directory' insecurely

[Steve Kemp]

On Mon, Mar 18, 2002 at 05:36:23PM -0500, Colin Walters wrote:

> I was talking with some Debian hackers on IRC about this problem, and
> one of them suggested a setgid helper program, sort of like movemail. 
> This seems to me to be the best solution.  We could give it arguments
> like:
> 
> /usr/lib/emacs/21.3/update-score --file=/var/games/emacs/snake-scores 
>  --add-score "Jane Hacker <address@hidden>   12345 points"

> Any thoughts/objections regarding this solution?

  It would solve the file locking problem, and allow shared scores.

  But it would appear to have the major flaw that a malicious user
 could fake their scores with almost no effort, eg:

[matrix] skx > update-score --file=/var/games/emacs/snake-score --add-score 
"Steve 99999999999999 points"

  I assume that you'd be making this setgid games, so that other files
 wouldn't be overwritable..?

Steve
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