Re: Rise of the Plugins

[Andrew Sobala <aes gnome org>]

Rui Miguel Silva Seabra wrote:
> Sex, 2007-05-18 �12:54 +0200, Martin Soto escreveu:
> > Hi Andrew,
> >
> > On Fri, 2007-05-18 at 11:28 +0100, Andrew Sobala wrote:
> > > Martin Soto wrote:
> > >
> > > > An additional point that nobody has mentioned so far is security. Most
> > > > (if not all) plugin implementations already available for Gnome programs
> > > > seem to allow for installing plugins in some user-owned directory. This
> > > > means that by gaining access to the user's home directory, an attacker
> > > > will be able to install code that gets run every time the user logs in:
> > > Yes, you can do that already. It's what the session's for.
>
> However, while /home/ can be mounted without any execution
> permissions, /usr not, and thus applications started by the session
> manager are supposedly blessed by the admins (distro maintainers, and
> what not) while those installed in ~/ *aren't*.

It's a good point. So we can solve this by requiring plugins to have +x 
in order to be loaded? Seems quite elegant to me.

--
Andrew