On Mon, Feb 10, 2014 at 8:23 PM, Walter Dnes <waltd...@waltdnes.org> wrote: > On Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 12:28:43AM +0000, Kerin Millar wrote >> On 10/02/2014 23:57, Walter Dnes wrote: >> > >> > What's the point, if you still have to run as root (or su or sudo) for >> > the emerge update process? >> >> It's the principle of least privilege. Is there any specific reason for >> portage to fork and exec rsync as root? Is rsync sandboxed? Should rsync >> have unfettered read/write access to all mounted filesystems? Can it be >> guaranteed that rsync hasn't been compromised? Can it be guaranteed that >> PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS will contain safe options at all times? >> >> The answer to all of these questions is "no". Basically, the combination >> of usersync and non-root ownership of PORTDIR hardens the process in a >> sensible way while conferring no disadvantage. > > If /usr/portage is owned by portage:portage, then wouldn't a user > (member of portage) be able to do mischief by tweaking ebuilds? E.g. > modify an ebuild to point to a tarball located on a usb stick, at > http://127.0.0.1/media/sdc1/my_tarball.tgz. This would allow a local > user to supply code that gets built and then installed in /usr/bin, or > /sbin, etc. >
Don't add untrusted users to the portage group.
