Re: Processed: glibc: Should print a warning when using (v)sprintf
Hi,
At Wed, 16 Apr 2003 12:31:21 +0200,
Julien LEMOINE wrote:
> > Julien, you have to answer Matt Zimmerman's question:
> > > gets() is _inherently_ insecure (there is no way to prevent it from
> > > writing beyond the end of the buffer), and so it should never be used.
> > > It is perfectly possible, however, to use sprintf and vsprintf securely,
> > > and sometimes good (portability) reasons to do so.
> > >
> > > So this kind of warning is not appropriate for sprintf nor vsprintf.
>
> It is true than snprintf and vsnprintf functions are not portable with some C
> libraries (Digital OSF1 for example). But I also saw a lot of buffer overflow
> with sprintf (in nparted for example). Probably a warning less violent like :
> "Warning: the 'sprintf' is quite dangerous, 'snprintf' is preferable, see
> documentation in ... for details"
> will be better, with a text file explaining all details.
>
> > I agree his opinion. Please tell me the reason.
> > If you don't have any strong reasons, then only I close it.
> >
> > Moreover, how many programs are this warning affected?
> Probably a lot.
IMHO, this message hits many programs which don't have any faults.
Well it's sure that sometimes sprintf occurs security problem, but
it's not like "gets". The correct use of this function does not
induce problems. Do you claim that all programmers are completely
stupid, so we have to introduce this link_warning? I belive it's not
true. I would not like to apply this patch.
Regards,
-- gotom
Reply to: