You may not use data derived from outside your program to affect
something else outside your program--at least, not by accident. All
command line arguments, environment variables, locale information (see
-L<perllocale>), results of certain system calls (readdir, readlink,
-the gecos field of getpw* calls), and all file input are marked as
-"tainted". Tainted data may not be used directly or indirectly in any
-command that invokes a sub-shell, nor in any command that modifies
-files, directories, or processes. (B<Important exception>: If you pass
-a list of arguments to either C<system> or C<exec>, the elements of
-that list are B<NOT> checked for taintedness.) Any variable set
-to a value derived from tainted data will itself be tainted,
-even if it is logically impossible for the tainted data
-to alter the variable. Because taintedness is associated with each
-scalar value, some elements of an array can be tainted and others not.
+L<perllocale>), results of certain system calls (readdir(),
+readlink(), the variable of shmread(), the messages returned by
+msgrcv(), the password, gcos and shell fields returned by the
+getpwxxx() calls), and all file input are marked as "tainted".
+Tainted data may not be used directly or indirectly in any command
+that invokes a sub-shell, nor in any command that modifies files,
+directories, or processes, B<with the following exceptions>:
+
+=over 4
+
+=item *
+
+If you pass a list of arguments to either C<system> or C<exec>,
+the elements of that list are B<not> checked for taintedness.
+
+=item *
+
+Arguments to C<print> and C<syswrite> are B<not> checked for taintedness.
+
+=back
+
+Any variable set to a value
+derived from tainted data will itself be tainted, even if it is
+logically impossible for the tainted data to alter the variable.
+Because taintedness is associated with each scalar value, some
+elements of an array can be tainted and others not.
For example:
best way to call something that might be subjected to shell escapes: just
never call the shell at all.
- use English;
- die "Can't fork: $!" unless defined $pid = open(KID, "-|");
- if ($pid) { # parent
- while (<KID>) {
- # do something
- }
- close KID;
- } else {
- my @temp = ($EUID, $EGID);
- $EUID = $UID;
- $EGID = $GID; # initgroups() also called!
- # Make sure privs are really gone
- ($EUID, $EGID) = @temp;
- die "Can't drop privileges"
- unless $UID == $EUID && $GID eq $EGID;
- $ENV{PATH} = "/bin:/usr/bin";
- exec 'myprog', 'arg1', 'arg2'
- or die "can't exec myprog: $!";
- }
+ use English;
+ die "Can't fork: $!" unless defined($pid = open(KID, "-|"));
+ if ($pid) { # parent
+ while (<KID>) {
+ # do something
+ }
+ close KID;
+ } else {
+ my @temp = ($EUID, $EGID);
+ my $orig_uid = $UID;
+ my $orig_gid = $GID;
+ $EUID = $UID;
+ $EGID = $GID;
+ # Drop privileges
+ $UID = $orig_uid;
+ $GID = $orig_gid;
+ # Make sure privs are really gone
+ ($EUID, $EGID) = @temp;
+ die "Can't drop privileges"
+ unless $UID == $EUID && $GID eq $EGID;
+ $ENV{PATH} = "/bin:/usr/bin"; # Minimal PATH.
+ # Consider sanitizing the environment even more.
+ exec 'myprog', 'arg1', 'arg2'
+ or die "can't exec myprog: $!";
+ }
A similar strategy would work for wildcard expansion via C<glob>, although
you can use C<readdir> instead.
Compile this wrapper into a binary executable and then make I<it> rather
than your script setuid or setgid.
-See the program B<wrapsuid> in the F<eg> directory of your Perl
-distribution for a convenient way to do this automatically for all your
-setuid Perl programs. It moves setuid scripts into files with the same
-name plus a leading dot, and then compiles a wrapper like the one above
-for each of them.
-
In recent years, vendors have begun to supply systems free of this
inherent security bug. On such systems, when the kernel passes the name
of the set-id script to open to the interpreter, rather than using a
should never have to specify this yourself. Most modern releases of
SysVr4 and BSD 4.4 use this approach to avoid the kernel race condition.
-Prior to release 5.003 of Perl, a bug in the code of B<suidperl> could
-introduce a security hole in systems compiled with strict POSIX
-compliance.
+Prior to release 5.6.1 of Perl, bugs in the code of B<suidperl> could
+introduce a security hole.
=head2 Protecting Your Programs
source. Security through obscurity, the name for hiding your bugs
instead of fixing them, is little security indeed.
-You can try using encryption via source filters (Filter::* from CPAN).
-But crackers might be able to decrypt it. You can try using the
-byte code compiler and interpreter described below, but crackers might
-be able to de-compile it. You can try using the native-code compiler
+You can try using encryption via source filters (Filter::* from CPAN,
+or Filter::Util::Call and Filter::Simple since Perl 5.8).
+But crackers might be able to decrypt it. You can try using the byte
+code compiler and interpreter described below, but crackers might be
+able to de-compile it. You can try using the native-code compiler
described below, but crackers might be able to disassemble it. These
pose varying degrees of difficulty to people wanting to get at your
code, but none can definitively conceal it (this is true of every
projects / p5sagit/p5-mst-13.2.git / blobdiff