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Re: Bug#581434: UPG and the default umask



Klaus Ethgen wrote:
> Urgh, and as in debian this is set, procmail is per default unsave on
> all systems where non UPG is used or where the user like to use his own
> UPG for sharing purpose!?
> 
> To change all that software just to let the umask be convenient for just
> one very special use case and make all the rest all that unsave? Sorry,
> but this is like the openssl disaster just intentional.

If you give untrusted users write access to your home directory or to
individual dotfiles, you will discover:

* A handful of programs (ssh, exim, maildrop) will try to detect this
  and block it.
* The majority of programs, from bash on down, will happily use their
  dotfiles no matter who owns them.

I'm curious about why those few programs do implement their additional
checks. There's probably some interesting history there.

But requiring every program that has a dotfile to implement security
checking for that dotfile is doomed to failure, and so, sensibly, that
is not done. Your typical program with a dotfile relies on the user
choosing a safe combination of umask and directory permissions for its
security.

-- 
see shy jo, not responding to this person's continued openssh trolling

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