From: Alan Modra <amodra@gmail.com>
To: Siddhesh Poyarekar <siddhesh@gotplt.org>
Cc: Richard Earnshaw <Richard.Earnshaw@foss.arm.com>,
Nick Clifton <nickc@redhat.com>,
Binutils <binutils@sourceware.org>,
"gdb@sourceware.org" <gdb@sourceware.org>
Subject: Re: RFC: Adding a SECURITY.md document to the Binutils
Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2023 14:46:10 +0930 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <ZDeQGsSXpGULbPG6@squeak.grove.modra.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <7f76e17d-f9fc-92cb-0bc3-99cd155a1c00@gotplt.org>
On Thu, Apr 13, 2023 at 12:25:45AM -0400, Siddhesh Poyarekar wrote:
> On 2023-04-12 23:51, Alan Modra wrote:
> > On Wed, Apr 12, 2023 at 01:10:01PM -0400, Siddhesh Poyarekar wrote:
> > > OK, then how about this for the first paragraph:
> > >
> > > ~~~
> > > A security bug is one that threatens the security of a system or network.
> > > In the context of GNU Binutils, there are two ways in which a bug could have
> > > security consequences. The primary method is when the tools introduce a
> > > vulnerability in the output file that was not present in the input files
> > > being processed. The other, albeit unlikely way is when a bug in the tools
> > > results in a privilege boundary is crossed in either the tools themselves or
> > > in the code they generate.
> > > ~~~
> >
> > I don't see that talking about privilege boundaries is particularly
> > relevant. Consider this:
> >
> > It is trivially easy to craft an object file that when examined with
> > objdump will read your ssh private keys. That's not a bug, it's a
> > feature of thin archives.
> >
> > Now all you need is some means of delivering those private keys, and
> > I'm sure there are plenty of buffer overflows in libbfd waiting to be
> > exploited, especially with --enable-targets=all.
>
> That's not a crossing of privilege boundaries;
I know. Ah, I see. You were saying that only the very narrow case of
a privilege escalation will be considered a "security bug". Fair
enough I suppose, but that's close to the much simpler and more easily
understood:
"binutils makes no claim to being secure, ergo there are no security
bugs".
--
Alan Modra
Australia Development Lab, IBM
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2023-04-13 5:16 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 56+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2023-04-07 8:42 Nick Clifton
2023-04-07 10:36 ` Eli Zaretskii
2023-04-11 13:29 ` Nick Clifton
2023-04-11 14:23 ` Simon Marchi
2023-04-11 15:00 ` Eli Zaretskii
2023-04-11 16:22 ` Nick Clifton
2023-04-11 16:32 ` Matt Rice
2023-04-11 18:18 ` J.W. Jagersma
2023-04-12 8:43 ` Nick Clifton
2023-04-08 6:30 ` Jan Beulich
2023-04-10 18:30 ` John Baldwin
2023-04-20 15:56 ` Nick Clifton
2023-04-11 19:45 ` Ian Lance Taylor
2023-04-12 16:02 ` Richard Earnshaw
2023-04-12 16:26 ` Siddhesh Poyarekar
2023-04-12 16:52 ` Richard Earnshaw
2023-04-12 16:58 ` Paul Koning
2023-04-12 17:10 ` Siddhesh Poyarekar
2023-04-13 3:51 ` Alan Modra
2023-04-13 4:25 ` Siddhesh Poyarekar
2023-04-13 5:16 ` Alan Modra [this message]
2023-04-13 12:00 ` Siddhesh Poyarekar
2023-04-13 10:25 ` Richard Earnshaw
2023-04-13 11:53 ` Siddhesh Poyarekar
2023-04-13 12:37 ` Richard Earnshaw
2023-04-13 12:54 ` Siddhesh Poyarekar
2023-04-13 13:11 ` Richard Earnshaw
2023-04-13 13:35 ` Siddhesh Poyarekar
2023-04-13 13:40 ` Richard Earnshaw
2023-04-13 13:56 ` Siddhesh Poyarekar
2023-04-13 14:50 ` Richard Earnshaw
2023-04-13 15:02 ` Siddhesh Poyarekar
2023-04-13 15:05 ` Richard Earnshaw
2023-04-13 16:42 ` Siddhesh Poyarekar
2023-04-14 9:52 ` Richard Earnshaw
2023-04-14 12:43 ` Siddhesh Poyarekar
2023-04-14 12:49 ` Richard Earnshaw
2023-04-14 13:13 ` Siddhesh Poyarekar
2023-04-13 15:08 ` Paul Koning
2023-04-13 16:02 ` Siddhesh Poyarekar
2023-04-13 16:49 ` Paul Koning
2023-04-13 17:00 ` Siddhesh Poyarekar
2023-04-13 17:05 ` Paul Koning
2023-04-13 17:29 ` Siddhesh Poyarekar
2023-04-13 17:37 ` Paul Koning
2023-04-13 18:16 ` Siddhesh Poyarekar
2023-04-14 17:37 ` Ian Lance Taylor
2023-04-14 18:27 ` Siddhesh Poyarekar
2023-04-14 20:46 ` Ian Lance Taylor
2023-04-14 21:24 ` Siddhesh Poyarekar
2023-04-17 15:31 ` Michael Matz
2023-04-17 19:55 ` Ian Lance Taylor
2023-04-14 19:45 ` DJ Delorie
2023-04-14 20:49 ` Ian Lance Taylor
2023-04-15 6:41 ` Xi Ruoyao
2023-04-13 16:06 ` Richard Earnshaw
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=ZDeQGsSXpGULbPG6@squeak.grove.modra.org \
--to=amodra@gmail.com \
--cc=Richard.Earnshaw@foss.arm.com \
--cc=binutils@sourceware.org \
--cc=gdb@sourceware.org \
--cc=nickc@redhat.com \
--cc=siddhesh@gotplt.org \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for read-only IMAP folder(s) and NNTP newsgroup(s).