Re: [PATCH 4/4] pmap: reduced permissions

[Nix <nix@esperi.org.uk>]

On 23 Jan 2006, Albert Cahalan said:
> On 1/23/06, Arjan van de Ven <arjan@infradead.org> wrote:
>> On Mon, 2006-01-23 at 04:28 -0500, Albert Cahalan wrote:
> 
>> > I tend to think that glibc should not be reading this file.
>> > What excuse is there?
>>
>> glibc needs to be able to find out if a certain address is writable. (eg
>> mapped "w"). The only way available for that is... reading the maps
>> file.
> 
> What the heck for? That's gross.

Ironically enough, it's security. :)

> If glibc is just providing this info for apps, there should be a
> system call for it. Otherwise, being the C library, glibc can
> damn well remember what it did.

Nah, it's used for vfprintf() argument-area checking.

Specifically, it's the Linux implementation of __readonly_area(),
located in sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/readonly-area.c in glibc-3.4-to-be,
and used by vfprintf() on behalf of __vfprintf_chk(). Calls to this
function (and the other __*_chk() functions) are expanded by glibc's
string headers and generated by GCC 4.1+ automatically when possible
(and by GCCs out there in the field: this patch is shipped by RH
already, known as FORTIFY_SOURCE).

FORTIFY_SOURCE zaps a whole class of security vulnerabilities stone
dead. Breaking it would be a bad idea. Therefore, /proc/self/maps has to
remain readable, even in setuid programs, because setuid programs are
one class of programs for which FORTIFY_SOURCE is crucial.

[Jakub added to Cc:, he can defend his own code much better than I can]

-- 
`Everyone has skeletons in the closet.  The US has the skeletons
 driving living folks into the closet.' --- Rebecca Ore
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