Well, I am not going to argue whether this is grave security bug or not. But please note that there hasn't been single security issue I am aware of in nsd2 (and nsd3), so this bug is only hypothetical.
However I am going to replace first two lines of start: to: if ${rebuild} && [ \( "${zonesfile}" -nt "${dbfile}" \) -a -n "${nsd_user}" ]; then /sbin/start-stop-daemon --start -c nsd:nsd --exec /usr/sbin/nsdc -- rebuild; fi And nsd2 is going to be dropped and replaced with nsd3 in next stable. Ondrej 2009/1/31 Michael Tokarev <m...@tls.msk.ru>: > Package: nsd > Version: 2.3.7-1.1 > Severity: security > > > In /etc/init.d/nsd script there's a construct (repeated twice): > > [ -n "${nsd_user}" ] && chown "${nsd_user}:" "${dbfile}" > > where dbfile defaults to /var/lib/nsd/nsd.db, or in chroot, and > the parent directory of it (/var/lib/nsd) is owned by $nsd_user > (default nsd). > > The whole chroot idea is to protect system from someone who managed > to get a way to break into the system utilizing a bug in - in this > case - nsd daemon. Assuming that in worst case, an attacker can > execute arbitrary code on the system as a user running nsd. > > Now suppose the attacker changes /var/lib/nsd/nsd.db to be a > symlink to /etc/password. And after the next restart or reload > of nsd, that file's owner will be happily changed to nsd. With > all bad stuff follows it. > > I can only guess where this chown come from, in the first place. > But I *think* that proper solution will be to always run > `nsdc rebuild' as that user instead of root. Note that running > it as root so that the result is written into nsd-owned directory > does no good too. > > This is, as far as I can see, Debian-specific security bug. > > -- System Information: > Debian Release: 5.0 > APT prefers stable > APT policy: (990, 'stable'), (500, 'testing'), (50, 'unstable'), (1, > 'experimental') > Architecture: i386 (i686) > > Kernel: Linux 2.6.28-i686smp (SMP w/2 CPU cores) > Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash > > Versions of packages nsd depends on: > ii adduser 3.110 add and remove users and groups > ii libc6 2.7-18 GNU C Library: Shared libraries > ii libssl0.9.8 0.9.8g-14 SSL shared libraries > ii libwrap0 7.6.q-16 Wietse Venema's TCP wrappers > libra > > nsd recommends no packages. > > nsd suggests no packages. > > -- no debconf information > > > -- Ondřej Surý <ond...@sury.org> -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-rc-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org