Re: USB Port Auto Notification to BitPim

Joe Pham wrote:
> I'll check in some experimental code that does this for all to play 
> with it.

I highly disagree with the goals but very strongly disagree on the 
implementation.  On the technical side it doesn't allow for multiple 
users on a machine (eg "fast user switching") and it doesn't allow one 
user running multiple instances.  The config port setting is rather 
useless since the usbcell script will be running bitpim as root and 
hence use root's config setting.

 From the security side, this is a *very* bad idea.  There is no form of 
protection from other processes on the same machine.  Additionally a 
device name is passed.  What if someone did '-a /dev/hda'?  Will AT 
commands end up scribbled all over the partition table if the user is a 
member of the disk group or root?  It doesn't matter what attacks you or 
I can think of - the bad guys will be able to think up way better ones. 
  Whenever there is the potential of user programs running as root 
and/or some communication from root to non root users, even tiny things 
can be exploited.

It is far better to adopt an existing mechanism. {d,i}notify will work 
and doesn't require the cooperation of other processes.  dbus already 
has a mechanism and others have put way more thought into security. 
Even using a named pipe in a private directory owned by the user 
significantly reduces risk although there are potential race conditions.

Roger

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