ProcMaps.txt may contain private information such as username

Geir Ove Myhr gomyhr at gmail.com
Sun Jul 29 18:31:49 UTC 2012


On Fri, Jul 27, 2012 at 8:02 PM, Fred . <eldmannen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Not all potential PII can, should or ought to be removed. But I do
> think that the $USER and $HOSTNAME should definitely without a doubt
> be scrubbed.
>
> Why should $USER and $HOSTNAME not be automatically scrubbed?

Any automatic scrubbing of pre-defined strings can have funny
consequences, as this example shows:
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/06/01/186216/war-and-nookd-ebook-regex-gone-haywire

I will imagine my submitted logs would look funny if such a feature
existed, since I usually use short usernames on my systems, such as
"go" (my initials).

One way to make it easier for people who are worried about the logs
leaking information that they consider private (but most other don't),
would be to have an option to set a bug report to private initially.
Then the submitter can look through and remove/edit files that they do
not want to make public.

Geir Ove



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