Re: Tracker as a security risks

[Tobias Mueller <muelli cryptobitch de>]

Hi.

On Mo, 2016-12-05 at 16:42 +0100, Carlos Garnacho wrote:
> And I should add... Tracker is not alone here, if it's not Tracker
> stumbling on infected content, with varying but still rather low
> levels of interaction it may be a thumbnailer, a previewer like sushi,
> or the web browser itself streaming content which hit this. So there's
> more places in need of further isolation when dealing with untrusted
> content.
>
> And still, the chain is only as strong as its weakest link, as soon as
> there is anything opening that file with wide enough permissions to
> cause any harm, you're essentially screwed.
True. Which is why operating on untrusted input with regular privileges
is a bad idea™.  The cases you've listed require some degree of user
intervention though. The blog post described a way which described very
little user intervention which makes is more scary than the attacks
that you've just described.

>  This might sound like an
> argument to running every app through flatpak, although I think the
> long term answer always is "fix the vulnerability!".
Hah! That'd be great! Let's work hard on making that happen. However, I
think by now it's safe to assume that we cannot fix all the C code
there is. We've tried for the last decade or so.

I like the engagement reg. Rust. I hope it'll be successful.

Cheers,
  Tobi