Closed Bug 445804 Opened 17 years ago Closed 13 years ago

Suggested crontab configuration opens security hole

Categories

(Bugzilla :: Documentation, defect)

defect
Not set
minor

Tracking

()

RESOLVED FIXED
Bugzilla 3.4

People

(Reporter: wes, Assigned: selsky)

References

()

Details

Attachments

(1 file)

Section 2.3.1, Bug Graphs in extraconfig.html suggests the following crontab entry: cd <your-bugzilla-directory> ; ./collectstats.pl This opens up a minor security hole, where an arbitrary executable named collectstats.pl could be run from another location (potentially the directory crond was manually launched from) when "your-bugzilla-directory" is not findable for some condition. (i.e. bugzilla de-install, NFS failure, permissions) The fix is trivial: cd <your-bugzilla-directory> && ./collectstats.pl This entry will only run collectstats.pl to run if chdir succeeds.
Well, that'a not a big deal. The one typing the command line is responsible to type the correct path. Not a security bug.
Severity: normal → minor
Sorry to comment on such an old bug report, but the following is important. Many old shells had special-case code such that if a cd failed, the shell would abort the entire script. At some point in time, somebody decided that this special case was a bad idea. Modern shells don't have this any more, so far as I can tell. But many old programming manuals still use this type of code, and many old-timers do this out of habit, because it used to work. Code examples should, therefore, use the && and not the semicolon, just to remind people that shells are not so fail-safe any more. I just tested this on SunOS 4.1.3_U1: # cat x.sh #! /bin/sh cd /NONEXISTENT ; echo reached here echo reached next line # ./x.sh ./x.sh: /NONEXISTENT: bad directory #
Assignee: documentation → selsky
Status: NEW → ASSIGNED
Attachment #564139 - Flags: review?(documentation)
Attachment #564139 - Flags: review?(documentation) → review+
Flags: approval4.2+
Flags: approval4.0+
Flags: approval3.6+
Flags: approval3.4+
Flags: approval+
Target Milestone: --- → Bugzilla 3.4
Committing to: bzr+ssh://lpsolit%40gmail.com@bzr.mozilla.org/bugzilla/trunk/ modified docs/en/xml/installation.xml Committed revision 7976. Committing to: bzr+ssh://lpsolit%40gmail.com@bzr.mozilla.org/bugzilla/4.2/ modified docs/en/xml/installation.xml Committed revision 7942. Committing to: bzr+ssh://lpsolit%40gmail.com@bzr.mozilla.org/bugzilla/4.0/ modified docs/en/xml/installation.xml Committed revision 7652. Committing to: bzr+ssh://lpsolit%40gmail.com@bzr.mozilla.org/bugzilla/3.6/ modified docs/en/xml/installation.xml Committed revision 7257. Committing to: bzr+ssh://lpsolit%40gmail.com@bzr.mozilla.org/bugzilla/3.4/ modified docs/en/xml/installation.xml Committed revision 6811.
Status: ASSIGNED → RESOLVED
Closed: 13 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
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