Subject: mlocate: may leak sensitive information
Package: mlocate
Version: 0.22.2-1
Severity: normal
By default, updatedb.mlocate traverses users' home directories. In a
setup where home directories (and swap) are encrypted, but for
performance reasons the rest of the system isn't, this means that if
updatedb.mlocate is run while a user is logged in and her home directory
is mounted, then the names of the files under the encrypted home are
stored unencrypted under /var/lib/mlocate, which makes them more
vulnerable if the hardware gets compromised.
This is easy to fix, of course, but it is a very, very non-obvious
pitfall for someone trying to build a secure system, especially as
mlocate seems to be the default for Debian (I don't recall installing it
explicitly). It would be more prudent to not sniff around private home
directories by default.
-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
APT prefers unstable
APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'stable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-0.bpo.1-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Versions of packages mlocate depends on:
ii adduser 3.112 add and remove users and groups
ii libc6 2.13-21 Embedded GNU C Library:
Shared lib
mlocate recommends no packages.
mlocate suggests no packages.
-- no debconf information
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