[OLPC Security] [sugar] secure /tmp and /var/tmp

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On Nov 8, 2007 9:33 AM, Jim Gettys <jg at laptop.org> wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-11-08 at 11:20 -0500, Ivan Krstić wrote:
>
> >
> > A tiny size restriction is pretty new.
>
> Heh.  You are way too young....
>
> The presumption has always been you'd better keep things in /tmp pretty
> small; that's why the distinction between /tmp and /var/tmp was made.
> It allowed people to use RAM file systems for speed long before it would
> have otherwise been feasible.
>                             - Jim

Yes.. about 17 years ago when I got into the business (and that makes
me a kid).. the first job of every jr sysadmin was to write a cleanup
script that worked better than the last cleanup script. It ran every
hour in /tmp and cleaned up anything older than an hour and anything
over 1 MB that had been around for 15 minutes.. and we still ran out
of /tmp 1 or 2 a week.

In the end, the question does breaking /tmp gain anything in security
on a system where the primary user is one person at a time, and the
malware writers still have access to the home directory.


-- 
Stephen J Smoogen. -- CSIRT/Linux System Administrator
How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed
in a naughty world. = Shakespeare. "The Merchant of Venice"