[arch-general] How secure is wifi-menu

[Doug Newgard]

On Wed, 01 Apr 2015 20:43:46 +0200
h8h at dev-nu11.de wrote:

> hi
> 
> I recently switched to a new laptop and therefore I copied all my 
> wifi-configuration files (/etc/netctl) to the new one. Too bad that the 
> wifi interface has changed (thanks to sysctl) and I wrote a small bash 
> script, which should change the `interface` variable. By the way the 
> script doesn't work very well, but I place it in the same folder with 
> all the wifi-configuration files (/etc/netctl/) and I noticed that the 
> tool `wifi-menu` is executing my script. I don't think this is a big 
> vulnerability nor a bug, but if an attacker has the opportunity to place 
> a bash file there, the system could be damaged by simple executing 
> `wifi-menu`. Yes I know that the folder is not world / user writeable, 
> but maybe some thoughts from the archlinux community?
> 
> The reason for executing is sourceing all the files in /etc/netctl, 
> maybe this could be improved by using eval and grep, see [1]
> 
> Cheers
> Christian Homeyer
> H8H
> 
> [1] https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=85726

Same thing could be said for /etc/profile.d/, /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d, and
various other places. Permissions are there for a reason.

Doug