Major FUD (was Re: Add root drive mapping to default config file)

[Todd Vierling]

All this FUD is getting me hungry.  <bad pun>

On Tue, 3 Jun 2003, PETREOLLE Sylvain wrote:

: please dont add / to the default config.

: - its insecure, since you can write everywhere you want
: and some filesystem corruption still exist today.

Bullshit.  Wine can't corrupt your filesystem, unless somehow the host OS is
letting users write to arbitrary data blocks of filesystems.  This can be
done to NT, too, you know -- ever try writing data to "//./PhysicalDrive0"
when logged in as Administrator?

(Note that a person who is dumb enough to log in to a Unix box as "root"
all the time is *definitely* one who would log in to Windows as
"Administrator" all the time.  Both of these are security risks for
arbitrary files, but restricting file access in Wine under the premise that
it protects such arbitrary file access is just as moronic.)

: - it will cause recursion/drive change problems =>
: example : what will be the current drive/directory
: if you access the fake C:\windows
:  via Z:\home\user\fake_c\windows ?

Red herring.  You can do this in Windows too using SUBST, as well as Win2k+
which allows mounting one filesystem in an unlimited number of locations
(including inside a filesystem in the Unix fashion).  Also think "reparse
points".

: On my RH box I have a drive called W: that contains wine sources and P:
: contains programs/.
: If I am in W: (wcmd) and I do 'cd programs', wcmd now says P:\.

Sounds like a wcmd bug to me, or a bug in wine's path parsing, but this is
also a red herring as it is *unrelated* to the topic of adding a drive
letter mapping to /.

On Tue, 3 Jun 2003, Carlos Lozano wrote:

: Even with read-only, i don't like the idea of window programs
: reading in "/dev" and "/proc".

Why not?  You can read "//./PhysicalDrive0" in Windows.  And winelib
programs that choose to access the native libc would have no such
restriction anyway.

: Besides it shouldn't be possible enable "ShowDotFiles" when your home
: is mapped, because it could read your private ssh keys.

Now you're getting into serious FUD.  If I install F-Secure SSH in Windows,
don't you think programs will be able to read its private keys too?  You do
use *passphrases* to lock your private keys, right?

==

Have you folks ever USED the operating systems you're trying to describe?
Y'all seem to be under the fallacious impression that letting Wine access
arbitrary files is somehow less secure than letting host-OS Unix programs
access arbitrary files.  It's not like the host Unix OS is permitting Wine
to access files or resources that regular Unix commands can't....

Now, if someone would like to offer a *technically competent* argument as to
why mapping a drive letter to / is bad, I'd love to hear it.

-- 
-- Todd Vierling <tv at pobox.com>