Re: GTK+-1.2.9 Released

[Kevin Handy <kth srv net>]

Havoc Pennington wrote:
> 
> Valdis Kletnieks vt edu writes:
> > On Mon, 05 Mar 2001 14:10:29 EST, Havoc Pennington said:
> > > Right. Adding something like a GTK_ALLOW_INSECURE environment variable
> > > doesn't seem like a terrible idea, though it's too late to do so for
> > > 1.2.9.
> >
> > Wrong.
> >
> > A hacker can just say 'export GTK_ALLOW_INSECURE' and then run his
> > exploit.
> 
> Obviously. My thought is that the purpose of the check in GTK isn't to
> stop exploits, it's to stop apps from creating the situation that
> allows exploits. i.e. it is really just a "fix your app" warning, even
> though it exits as a way of punctuating the warning.
> 
> > A better solution would be to have a global variable inside the GTK libs
> > that the application itself could set if it was willing to take the risks.
> 
> I like that a bit less, because it doesn't require the user to type
> anything. I would like users to say "please screw me," otherwise
> one clueless app author can hose a bunch of users.
> 
> Perhaps the best solution is a combination, GTK_ALLOW_INSECURE enables
> makes the gtk_disable_security_check() function do something, by
> default gtk_disable_security_check() would be a no-op. So then you
> need both the app author and the user to agree to make the app
> insecure.

How about adding a command line option instead of a shell variable.
Makes it obvious that this application has something odd about it.

	slashem --insecure