Python, Linux, and the setuid bit

[Chris Angelico]

On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 7:28 PM, Richard Kettlewell <rjk at greenend.org.uk> wrote:
> This program is on a security boundary, the pathological cases are
> precisely the ones the attacker looks for.
>
> (It’s hard to see how an attacker could turn this into a useful attack.
> But perhaps the attacker has more imagination than me.)

Quite frankly, I don't even care :) It's easy enough to fix the bug.
The idiomatic code will compile without warnings *and* be secure, so
I'm not seeing any reason to use the existing form. All I'm saying is
that it's normally going to happen to work; sure, an attacker might
well be able to get into something (although if you can generate 4GB
of environment, the fact that it doesn't get zeroed is likely to be
less of a concern than the massive DOS potential of a huge env!!), but
casual usage will have it seeming to work. The obvious solution is
right in every possible way, so that's the thing to do moving forward.

ChrisA