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Message-ID: <4E97BE87.80608@redhat.com>
Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2011 10:15:59 +0530
From: Huzaifa Sidhpurwala <huzaifas@...hat.com>
To: oss-security@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: Re: radvd 1.8.2 released with security fixes
On 10/14/2011 12:21 AM, Solar Designer wrote:
> I am an outside observer here (I haven't reviewed the code myself), but
> doesn't the above amount to admin-configured privilege separation not
> actually being enabled? If so, this sounds like a security issue to me.
>
I dont think so. From the code i have read so far, here is what seems to
happen.
- radvd starts as root
- reads the configs
- if a username is specified (user=radvd in most cases):
- if "--singleprocess" is not specified:
- run privsep_init(): This forks another process which
runs as root. So after this point we have two
processes both running as root
- If privsep_init() fails, we have just one process
running as root
- run drop_root_privileges():
If this succedes, we have two processes one running as
root and another as radvd user, or if privsep_init()
failed earlier, we have one process running as radvd
user.
If this fails, application quits
- If username was not specified radvd continues to run as a single
process as root.
So failure in privsep_init() results in just one process running as
radvd user. If it did not fail it would result in one process running as
root and another as radvd user.
I dont think this would be a security issue in my opinion.
--
Huzaifa Sidhpurwala / Red Hat Security Response Team
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