Re^2: To taint or not to taint?

in reply to Re: To taint or not to taint?
in thread To taint or not to taint?

For data coming from users, yes, absolutely agree.

For internal data, eg paths from your config files which are readable only by root, would you still want this enabled? Would you do any real checks on these, or just untaint them blindly?

Comment on Re^2: To taint or not to taint?

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Re^3: To taint or not to taint? by tilly (Archbishop) on Mar 19, 2009 at 15:40 UTC
The point of taint checking is to make the programmer decide what is risky. Obviously the config file that is that protected is safe, and so blindly untainting it is reasonable. That is the cost of the double-check that the checks I care about on my users really are being done as I think they are.	[reply]
Re^4: To taint or not to taint? by clinton (Priest) on Mar 19, 2009 at 15:44 UTC
Makes sense. Which has made me think, I could change my config loader to automatically untaint all the data it loads from a file if the file is writable only by the current user, no?	[reply]
Re^5: To taint or not to taint? by tilly (Archbishop) on Mar 19, 2009 at 15:46 UTC
That would be a perfectly reasonable change for any non-suid script. Because any damage that can be done by changing that file can be done more easily directly without using your script.	[reply]

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