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Re: Issues with exported functions


From: Eric Blake
Subject: Re: Issues with exported functions
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2014 08:58:49 -0600
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On 09/28/2014 10:31 AM, Ángel González wrote:
> David A. Wheeler wrote:
>> 2. Import environment variables *ONLY* when they are requested; do *NOT* 
>> import them by default.  Christos Zoulas has proposed this.  This *IS* a 
>> real backwards-incompatible change.  But most users do *NOT* use this 
>> functionality, and increasingly downstream systems are *already* switching 
>> to this mode.  E.G., FreeBSD has already switched to this; function imports 
>> require --import-functions or enabling the IMPORTFUNCTIONS option.   E.G., 
>> see: https://svnweb.freebsd.org/ports?view=revision&revision=369341
>> This change eliminates the entire class of problems.  It's still good to do 
>> #1, even with #2, because if someone DOES perform an import, it reduces the 
>> probability of accidentally importing the wrong thing.  People are ALREADY 
>> making this change, whether upstream does or not.
>>
> 
> There's also the middleground of not parsing the environment variables
> before they are going to be used. That avoids the issues caused by
> parsing what is not needed *and* doesn't break backwards compatibility.
> See the patch I sent a couple days ago.

That patch doesn't address the fact that variables and functions are in
different namespaces, though.  That is, if I do 'export f=1; f(){ echo
2;}; export -f f', then what would "$f" be in the child shell?  With
just your patch, but not the fix for separate namespaces of 4.3.27, you
are still trying to pass two separate 'f=...' environment variables,
with unspecified results, and risk the child getting 'echo "$f"' to see
the unexpected "() { echo 2; }' instead of the expected "1".  Your
approach of lazy parsing may still have benefits, but it is not a middle
ground, in that we MUST have separate namespaces (patch 27), and once we
have separate namespaces, your patch is no longer adding security, just
optimization.

> 
>> John Haxby recently posted that "A friend of mine said this could be a 
>> vulnerability gift that keeps on giving." 
>> (http://seclists.org/oss-sec/2014/q3/748).  Bash will be a continuous rich 
>> source of system vulnerabilities until it STOPS automatically parsing normal 
>> environment variables; all other shells just pass them through!   I've 
>> turned off several websites I control because I have *no* confidence that 
>> the current official bash patches actually stop anyone, and I am 
>> deliberately *not* buying products online today for the same reason.  I 
>> suspect others have done the same.  I think it's important that bash change 
>> its semantics so that it "obviously has absolutely no problems of this kind".
> 
> That's exactly what my patch does, although it wouldn't be transparent
> if used inside bash (eg. echo $FUNC), as opposed of usage by its
> children (wouldn't be hard to change, though).

I consider it an important design goal to ensure that ALL exported
variables cannot be corrupted no matter what their contents are.  We
aren't quite there yet (due to the issues of 'function a=b () {:;}
corrupting the variable named BASH_FUNC_a even after patch 27 is
applied).  But your own admission that $FUNC may be corrupted is an
argument against your patch in isolation.

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake redhat com    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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