[Chicago-talk] chown inside a script

[Tom Printy]

What if instead of doing a copy you use the scp with the -p flag. I
think this will preserve the permissions and any other attributes of the
file....

-Tom


On Thu, 2007-12-06 at 13:39 -0600, Jay Strauss wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> I figured if I showed my hand, everyone would call me a crazy person
> with an insecure system (which I'm not denying).
> 
> Here's the deal:
> 
> I run a MS application to which the files are stored on my samba
> server.  Currently, when a user creates a file, that user/owner is the
> only user with read (and write) access to said file.  BUT, when the
> file is "closed", I (me), the manager, use the application to move the
> file from one "folder" to a different "folder".  Behind the scenes the
> app, copies the file from one directory to another, and deletes the
> original.
> 
> As a result, I (jstrauss), become the owner of the file, and the
> person who created it, no longer has access.  I want to retain the
> original ownership, so that the creator can still look at the file
> (but no one else can).
> 
> So I wrote a cgi to change ownership, rather than sshing to the box,
> cd'ing to the directory, looking up the filename in the application,
> and then chown'ing filname*, everytime someone wants to see a "closed"
> file.
> 
> If there are better, easier, more secure ways to do this I'd welcome
> suggestions.  Please NOTE, the webserver is an internal webserver
> (behind my firewall), and my company includes me and 3 employees
> (really only 2.5 if you measured productivity :).
> 
> Jay
> 
> 
> 
> On Dec 6, 2007 9:59 AM, Ted Zlatanov <tzz at lifelogs.com> wrote:
> > On Wed, 05 Dec 2007 22:38:10 -0600 Jonathan Rockway <jon at jrock.us> wrote:
> >
> > JR> On Wed, 2007-12-05 at 22:28 -0600, Jay Strauss wrote:
> > >> Thanks.
> > >>
> > >> But I don't think that will work in my case, because I'm doing it from
> > >> a web page, I had to create an suid link to chown, to call from my
> > >> cgi.
> > >>
> > >> Unless there is some way to do it from inside perl, but still change
> > >> ownership of file not owned by the webserver.
> >
> > JR> This is a massive security nightmare.  Consider the case where someone
> > JR> symlinks /path/that/matches/your.glob to /etc/shadow.  You've just
> > JR> rendered the system unusable.
> >
> > JR> Also, keep in mind that you can't create a "setuid link".  chmod follows
> > JR> symlinks and updates the original file.
> >
> > I think chroot to a known good path that contains only data files (plus
> > a minimal chown setup) would work.  Symlinks to the outside won't
> > resolve inside such an environment.  Hard links will, if the filesystem
> > was shared, so don't put the data files on the /etc filesystem.  The
> > worst an attacker could do is corrupt the data inside the chroot
> > environment.  It's a pain to set it all up, though.
> >
> > Ted
> >
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> >
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