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Date:      Tue, 18 May 1999 17:45:40 -0400 (EDT)
From:      matt <matt@Mlink.NET>
To:        FreeBSD-QUESTIONS <questions@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Wordperfect 8
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.4.10.9905181736270.6597-100000@ns-1.ccia.cc>

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[NOTE: I know this is not FreeBSD specific, but with all the questions
       and concerns raised about WP8 on FreeBSD, I thought I might prevent
       some poor user getting screwed by someone setting up a race and
       overwriting some files.]

As most of us know, there is a security problem with WP8 making a chmod
777 dir in /tmp and blindly following any symlinks in that subdir.. I've
created a CHEAP and DIRTY work around. This will make it so that only ONE
user can use Wordperfect though, to me it makes no difference.. To some,
they might care.. But this is that I did.... I started wordperfect once..
it made the dir /tmp/wpc-ns-1.ccia.cc, I moved /tmp/wpc-ns-1.ccia.cc to
/usr/local/lib/corel (my install path for wordperfect) then I made a
symlink from /usr/local/lib/corel/wpc-ns-1.ccia.cc to /tmp/wpc-ns-1.ccia.cc. 
Then, I did a chmod 700 /usr/local/lib/corel so no one could access it.
While this is dirty and restricts WP to being ran as root only (or
whatever user you make the symlink and/or own /usr/local/lib/corel to.
It's much better then having an open dir in /tmp with a program that will
follow symlinks. here's how it looks on my system..

root[ns-1]:/tmp# ls -l wpc-ns-1.ccia.cc
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  37 May 17 15:20 wpc-ns-1.ccia.cc@ ->
/usr/local/lib/corel/wpc-ns-1.ccia.cc

root[ns-1]:/usr/local/lib# ls -l |grep corel
drwx------  10 root  wheel      512 May 17 15:20 corel/

root[ns-1]:/usr/local/lib/corel# ls -l
total 10
drwx------  2 root  wheel   512 May 17 15:18 shbin10/
drwxrwxrwx  3 root  wheel  3072 May 17 15:18 shlib10/
drwx------  2 root  wheel   512 May 17 15:18 wpbin/
drwxrwxrwx  2 root  wheel   512 May 18 17:35 wpc-ns-1.ccia.cc/
drwxr-xr-x  2 root  wheel   512 May 17 15:18 wpexpdocs/
drwxr-xr-x  2 root  wheel   512 May 17 15:18 wpgraphics/
drwxrwxrwx  2 root  wheel   512 May 17 15:18 wplib/
drwxr-xr-x  2 root  wheel   512 May 17 15:18 wpmacros/

Now, it's completely restrictred to root. and no bad users can make
symlinks that root will follow.. for instance..

root[ns-1]:/tmp# su matt

matt[ns-1]:/tmp> ls
screens/                wpc-ns-1.ccia.cc@

matt[ns-1]:/tmp> cd wpc-ns-1.ccia.cc
wpc-ns-1.ccia.cc: Permission denied.

matt[ns-1]:/tmp> cd /usr/local/lib/corel
/usr/local/lib/corel: Permission denied.

I know this is cheap, dirty, but effective.. If WP8 didn't follow symlinks
blindly, we wouldn't have this problem in the first place..But since it
does follow them blindly, this fix works nicely =)

--
Mail: matt@mlink.net && matt@ccia.cc
@IRC: irc.idirect.ca && mlink.ca.relic.net



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