bug#47584: Race condition in ‘copy-account-skeletons’: possible privilege escalation.

[Maxime Devos]

On Sat, 2021-04-03 at 18:26 +0200, Maxime Devos wrote:
> A suggested blog post is attached.
A revised blog post is attached.

The following points are currently _not_ addressed:

Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> Also…  in this paragraph, it’s not entirely clear which user we’re
> talking about it.  In news.scm, I reworded it like so:
>  The attack can happen when @command{guix system reconfigure} is running.
>  Running @command{guix system reconfigure} can trigger the creation of new 
> user
>  accounts if the configuration specifies new accounts.  If a user whose 
> account
>  is being created manages to log in after the account has been created but
>  before ``skeleton files'' copied to its home directory have the right
>  ownership, they may, by creating an appropriately-named symbolic link in the
>  home directory pointing to a sensitive file, such as @file{/etc/shadow}, get
>  root privileges.
>
> It may also be worth mentioning that the user is likely unable to log in
> at all at that point, as I wrote here:

I can't think of something along these lines to write at the moment ...

Greetings,
Maxime.

0001-website-Add-post-about-vulnerability-in-copy-account.patch
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