Re: Security leak: Public disclosure of user data without their consent by installing software via pkg

Gordon Tetlow via freebsd-security <[email protected]> Tue, 6 Apr 2021 07:56:19 -0700

Newsgroups	gmane.os.freebsd.security.general
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

On Apr 6, 2021, at 7:42 AM, Shawn Webb <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Apr 06, 2021 at 04:39:40PM +0200, Miroslav Lachman wrote:
>> On 06/04/2021 16:27, Shawn Webb wrote:
>> 
>>> 1. BSDStats isn't run/maintained by the FreeBSD project. File the
>>>    report with the BSDStats project, not FreeBSD.
>>> 2. You install a package that is made to submit statistical data.
>>> 3. You're upset that it submits statistical data?
>> 
>> The problem here is that it collects and sends data right at the install
>> time. It is really unexpected to run installed package without user consent.
>> If you install Apache, MySQL or any other package the command / daemon is no
>> run by "pkg install" command.
>> This must be avoided.
> 
> It's probably easier to submit a patch than it is to write a
> lolwut-type email. All you gotta do is rm the post-install script.
> Also `pkg install` has the -I option. But whatever, let the lolwut
> mentality prevail!

I had a conversation on the side with the requestor. In short, there is already a patch to address this issue in https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=251152 <https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=251152>. Not sure why it hasn't been committed yet, but hopefully it gets picked up shortly.

Gordon

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