Re: Security Issue of .desktop files

[Daniel Ruoso <daniel@ruoso.com>]

Em Ter, 2009-02-24 às 20:49 +0100, Emilio Pozuelo Monfort escreveu:
> Daniel Ruoso wrote:
> > Em Ter, 2009-02-24 às 19:35 +0100, Josselin Mouette escreveu:
> >> Le mardi 24 février 2009 à 15:21 -0300, Daniel Ruoso a écrit :
> >>> Last week, an old security issue in desktop environments went through a
> >>> widely public discussion (including on slashdot)[1][2]. As I said, this
> >>> issue is not new[3], but there seem to be no action on the upstream to
> >>> fix it.
> >> On the contrary, there is action upstream to fix it, and Nautilus 2.26
> >> will only launch “safe” .desktop files.
> > and what are "safe" .desktop files?
> See this mail and its followups:
> http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2009-February/msg00132.html

I'm glad to see that, it's a shame I haven't found that thread. So, for
the record, *nautilus* is solving the .desktop files issue by:

1) Special casing files that are system-wide installed.
2) Requiring .desktop files to have the x bit set otherwise.

I'm pretty happy with that solution (although I would prefer not having
the "launch anyway"/"mark as trusted" box, but rather simply show the
properties dialog for a non-executable-non-system-wide .desktop file
(but I think that should go as an suggestion to upstream)).

I also would suggest that as a migration plan only, where we do turn
all .desktop files into executables in the future, so we have a
consistent environment.

Also, as "mark as trusted" is making the file executable, are you
planning to add a shbang to it?

daniel