Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 24007
absolute symbolic link in RH install tree
Last modified: 2007-04-18 12:30:41 EDT
The files RedHat/instimage/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb/compiled and RedHat/instimage/var/lib/xkb in the Red Hat Linux 7.0 install tree are both symbolic links to /tmp This is a security risk if the install tree is placed on a web server (e.g. for HTTP install). If the webserver has FollowSymLinks enabled, the entire /tmp directory of the webserver will be exposed to the world (and worse, to search engines). Should a symbolic link exist within /tmp to the root of the filesystem, the entire server directory structure will be exposed. I believe that network installs will still work if these symbolic links are removed.
Assigning to a developer.
this is not a security risk. the symlinks to point to /tmp are actually pointing to /tmp on the initial ramdisk during installation.
The symlinks do point to /tmp during the installation... That is not the bug. The problem is that when the tree is posted to a web server, the symlinks point to the /tmp directory of that server. This violates the security of the server unless other measures are taken (e.g. FollowSymLinks is disabled) One solution would be to change the instimage to an actual ISO image, then mount with loopback during installation. Another would be to change the programs on the instimage so they don't require access to /tmp or have /tmp hardcoded in or read /tmp from a config file.
The next version of Red Hat Linux will have no symlinks in the install trees that one would put on a web or ftp server.