RE: Bare repositories in the working tree are a security risk

[<rsbecker@nexbridge.com>]

On April 7, 2022 6:10 PM, brian m. carlson wrote:
>On 2022-04-07 at 21:53:26, Justin Steven wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I'm the author of one of the articles linked in Glen's mail. Thank you
>> Glen for summarising the problem beautifully and pushing this forward.
>>
>> Brian said:
>> > As mentioned elsewhere, git status doesn't work without a working tree.
>>
>> This is correct. However, it is possible to embed a bare repo that has
>> its own core.worktree which points to a directory within the
>> containing repo, satisfying the requirement of having a working tree.
>> This is covered in the article [1] and looks to be accounted for in
>> Taylor's reproducer script which admittedly I haven't run.
>>
>> > Instead, I'd rather see us avoid executing any program from the
>> > config or any hooks in a bare repository without a working tree
>> > (except for pushes).  I think that would avoid breaking things while
>> > still improving security.
>>
>> Due to the fact that the embedded bare repo can be made to have a
>> working tree, this won't be an effective fix.
>
>Then we'd probably be better off just walking up the entire hierarchy and
>excluding worktrees from embedded bare repositories, or otherwise restricting
>the config we read.  That will probably mean we'll need to walk the entire
>directory hierarchy to see if it's embedded (or at least to the root of the device) in
>such a case, but that should be relatively uncommon.
>
>I'd definitely like to see us make a security improvement here, but I also would like
>to avoid us breaking a lot of repositories, especially since we lack alternatives.
>
>If git fast-import could 100% correctly round-trip all commits and repositories, I
>would be much more open to blocking this in fsck after a deprecation period, but
>as it stands that's not possible.  Perhaps improving that would be a suitable way
>forward.

One option relating to enable/disable this is to set up a config option that, by default is false, to allow embedded bare repositories. At least with enough warning that this option is required, it might be acceptable. I would prefer never to receive a bare repo through any means (including through a more worrying submodule). From an attack vector standpoint, I would be more concerned about this in an automation setting, say GitHub workflows or Jenkins GitSCM. At least with GitHub workflows, this is "somewhat" contained within VMs under GitHub's control - although not entirely. Jenkins is probably more vulnerable as the clones done through that path do not get the same scrutiny, although in my world, I use a dedicated non-root UID and sandbox the whole thing. This topic makes me nervous and wonder whether we should be self-reporting a CVE.

Shuddering,
Randall