From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Richard Stallman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Closing a privilege escalation Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2018 21:09:14 -0400 Message-ID: Reply-To: rms@gnu.org NNTP-Posting-Host: blaine.gmane.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=Utf-8 X-Trace: blaine.gmane.org 1524618436 18058 195.159.176.226 (25 Apr 2018 01:07:16 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@blaine.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2018 01:07:16 +0000 (UTC) To: emacs-devel@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Wed Apr 25 03:07:12 2018 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by blaine.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.84_2) (envelope-from ) id 1fB8tr-0004cH-75 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Wed, 25 Apr 2018 03:07:11 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:33261 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fB8vy-0007pk-1t for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Tue, 24 Apr 2018 21:09:22 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:51523) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fB8vr-0007pe-St for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 24 Apr 2018 21:09:16 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fB8vq-0000MU-SD for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 24 Apr 2018 21:09:15 -0400 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::e]:48915) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fB8vq-0000MD-O0 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 24 Apr 2018 21:09:14 -0400 Original-Received: from rms by fencepost.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.82) (envelope-from ) id 1fB8vq-0002wh-19; Tue, 24 Apr 2018 21:09:14 -0400 X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.2.x-3.x [generic] X-Received-From: 2001:4830:134:3::e X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.21 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:224849 Archived-At: [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] With some arguments, emacs started inside sudo will run the user's own .emacs file rather than root's. This creates a known vulnerability for privilege escalation. I propose a feature to fix the vulnerability: For sudo-authorized users, require .emacs (and other Emacs startup files and directories) to be owned by root. This won't be a big hassle for them, since these users can sudo to edit their root-owned files. Do people see any problem with this? -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See https://stallman.org/skype.html.