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Message-ID: <20171101144927.srk7stiwoia4qt57@sentinelchicken.org>
Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2017 07:49:27 -0700
From: Tim <tim-security@...tinelchicken.org>
To: oss-security@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: Re: Fw: Security risk of vim swap files
> > Also, it almost never makes sense to put things in /tmp, for several
> > reasons pointed out by others. Making ~/.vim/... the default location
> > clearly is the best solution.
>
> And all those reasons make no sense. /tmp has a sticky bit precisely so that
> people could put stuff there, as opposed to /run.
We've been spending decades fixing filesystem races that arise from
cases where people use temporary files in world-writable directories.
You have to get a half dozen things exactly correct in order to use
/tmp. Why take the risk? Doesn't every normal (human) user account
have a home directory that is already protected?
> Just to clarify:
> 1. vim creates a swap file applying user's umask.
> Tested with vim on ArchLinux and vi on Fedora, if your vim doesn't do that,
> the corresponding package is broken.
Glad to hear at least some implementations are safe. But that is just
one of several potential issues.
> 2. It is totally OK to edit files in /tmp or /dev/shm or /var/tmp.
> The described "attack" when someone plants a /tmp/file.swp before another
> user edits /tmp/file is not going to work because vim will complain that the
> swap file already exists.
I hope they got the TOCTOU correct...
And as Alexander pointed out, /tmp is a bad place to put recovery
files because everything is often wiped from /tmp at reboot.
What's wrong with ~/.vim/ ?? You've argued that /tmp is OK, but
haven't given a reason why ~/.vim/ is bad. I suppose you could argue
that ~/.vim/{full-system-path-of-file} could get too long for the
underlying filesystem. Fine, then store these files as
~/.vim/{hmac-sha-256-of-full-system-path} and call it a day.
tim
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