RFC: Adding a SECURITY.md document to the Binutils

DJ Delorie dj@redhat.com
Fri Apr 14 19:45:33 GMT 2023


Ian Lance Taylor via Gdb <gdb@sourceware.org> writes:
> Compilers and linkers must behave in a reasonable manner when given
> untrusted input.

Are we confusing trusted with well-behaved?  I mean, if I download a
source tree from the FSF's git server, I trust it, but it may still be
ill-behaved.  Meanwhile, sources from a public mailing list may be
well-behaved but not trusted.

I'm only posting this because Carlos and I had long discussions about
this before we set up the glibc pre-commit CI.  This process takes
random patches from the public glibc mailing list, and builds them.
WHOA!  That's dangerous!  Yes.  The patches may produce well-defined
code, but are not trusted.  Those builds run in a tight sandbox to
mitigate any attack attempts.  Security here is outside the scope of the
build tools.  I don't expect gcc to scan for viruses or prevent people
from doing "#include </etc/passwd>".



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