[Bug 19668] sgid problem

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Ubuntu | gnome-games





------- Additional Comments From martin.pitt at ubuntu.com  2005-12-06 18:51 UTC -------
(In reply to comment #8)
> Due to worries about security, gtk+ always disallow suid/sgid binaries to run.
> gnome-games attempt to work around this by opening score files and immediately
> dropping privilege.

... which is a very sensible approach and best practice in programs which start
with elevated privileges. :)

> > Games have always been setgid games, I did not hear about any problems with that
> > and I don't have any objection against it. Of course every game can mess up the
> > high scores of every other game, but oh well, that's not the end of the world.
> 
> This is highly impossible except software maintainer is changing code for some
> programs to mess with other score files.

It's actually not that unlikely; if a user can exploit a buffer overflow or
similar (e. g. with a crafted saved game, or special input in the game itself,
or whatever), he could execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the game
and thus mess up all the score files. But this is harmless and uninteresting
enough that no actual exploit has ever been published :), so I am fine with
leaving things sgid. 

> (in reply to comment #6)
> > 2) Change the group used. Creating a new, unique, group for gnome-games (e.g.
> > gnomegames) is the best solution. You can change the group (and user) used via
> > the --with-scores-group and --with-scores-user options to configure at compile
> time.
> 
> Does this fix the problem that sgid binaries won't run?

I don't see how. Whether the binary is sgid games or sgid gnomegames certainly
doesn't make a difference.

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