Edward Bartolo <edbarx@???> writes:
> Actually, you can do away with using a root SUID for backend as that
> was initially how netman was designed. However, there were complaints
> that I was adding an extra dependency which simply was a dependency on
> sudo being installed. Moreover, my initial proposal that worked, used
> sudo in a way to only allow the backend to run; so, it was NOT
> configured the way sudo is on Ubuntu.
>
> Regarding the backend calling external processes, this is done through
> execl and popen. Calls to external processes were modified as soon as
> I uploaded my unfinished code the first time. There were justified
> claims like yours, that there were security issues with my code. I
> heeded those advices by actually letting other developers modify the
> code so that, security would not be compromised.

The short reply to the e-mail you were replying to is: "This is
bollocks as there's no real 'security boundary' here, it's about a
single user configuring his own system". The only data from possibly
untrusted sources you're dealing with are the SSIDs.

Someone who is concerned about this can try to configure this with the
'file system capabilities' he'd like to have it instead and change
whatever needs to be changed to make it work "like Fedora". But this is
essentially just hand-waiving in order to scare 'the unknown software
error' and 'the unkown software error' may well lurk in the
capability-handling code itself. Better go and find some real bugs and
fix them.

NB: I don't claim that there are no security-related bugs in this code
as I haven't checked it for them (and might be wrong if I had), however,
pointing out that there 'might' be such bugs is a waste of oxygen
(IMHO).