[Yum-devel] [PATCH] libproxy support

[David Woodhouse]

On Thu, 2012-03-15 at 09:36 -0400, Zdenek Pavlas wrote:
> Actually, on second thought, I'd rather not have this enabled
> by default.  While the support of KDE/GNOME config tools is nice, 
> the WPAD protocol seems quite scary.
> 
> If I understand it correctly, an (not too hard to forge) DHCPINFORM
> reply instructs the library to grab an URL and run Javascript in it.
> 
> Does the library drop root privileges before doing so?  How secure
> is the JS sandbox? 

While that's a worthwhile and sensible question, it's also an
implementation detail. Rather than using the original libproxy,
distributions these days should *actually* be using the trivial
implementation of the same API which comes from PacRunner. And then it's
just a DBus call to the PacRunner dæmon, rather than reloading the same
damn PAC script and having a JS interpreter in *every* process that
wants to lookup a proxy. The original libproxy implementation can, and
should, just die completely.

I'd be content just to put the DBus calls directly into yum/urlgrabber
instead, but libproxy is an API that others are using and it seemed like
the better choice in general when 'fixing' applications. But for yum,
given the security environment, I'd be content to say "we *really* don't
want to use the original libproxy, and PacRunner support is enough".

-- 
dwmw2
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