On Sat, 16 Mar 2013 12:05:09 +0100 David Kalnischkies wrote: > On Sat, Mar 16, 2013 at 8:42 AM, Serafeim Zanikolas <sez@debian.org> wrote: > > The attached patch enables apt to pass Pre-Install-Pkgs hook data via a fifo, > > instead of via stdin (which remains the default, of course). > > > > Unlike the proposal in the initial bug report, the fifo filename is not > > randomised, but instead declared via the following configuration option in > > /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/10apt-listbugs: > > Thanks! Hello David, hi Serafeim! A big thank you to Serafeim from my side as well, for addressing this issue. > Looks good to me (, but I haven't tested it yet). I cannot comment on the apt patch, since I am not familiar with apt internals (unfortunately!). > > Using a hook-defined fifoname rather than a random fifoname should be > okay as the later isn't more secure than the former (if an attacker has > root rights to write to it we are doomed anyway …) Please excuse my ignorance: isn't a pre-defined fifoname prone to a symlink attack? Only relying on proper write permissions for the directory where the fifo is created (/var/run/, which should be writable for root only) seems a bit weak to me... Or am I completely off-track? > and in fact creating > a randomly named fifo could be hard in practice … Isn't there anything like mkstemp(3) for named pipes? > > > So, does this patch provides what you need Francesco? I guess it does (probably), except for the security concerns I expressed. But please note that I haven't had any time at all to look at the patch in detail or to test it. Unfortunately, I am going through really hard days (actually, months) and from now on I will have slower and intermittent Internet connectivity for a while. This means that I am currently unable to dedicate a significant amount of time to this issue. I am enormously sorry about that. :-( > > > I guess the apt-listbugs patch is just for testing, but I say it non-the-less: > It would be good if at least apt-listbugs/wheezy would support both so we > don't create backport problems that early in the (not even started) wheezy > release cycle. ;) At this point of the wheezy freeze, I cannot introduce any change into apt-listbugs/wheezy, except for those that fix important or RC bugs. The release team seems to be so unreasonable that I could not even obtain an unblock for translation updates and documentation fixes, *just* because I was late by a *couple of days* with respect to a freeze policy change that was not even announced in advance! :-( See bug #692928 for details... Hence, I am afraid that any change (for apt-listbugs) to progress on the present issue will *not* migrate into testing until wheezy is released as stable... -- http://www.inventati.org/frx/frx-gpg-key-transition-2010.txt New GnuPG key, see the transition document! ..................................................... Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == CA01 1147 9CD2 EFDF FB82 3925 3E1C 27E1 1F69 BFFE
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