Re: Wrapper to mount Private directories without root

[Tyler Hicks <tyhicks@canonical.com>]

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On 2012-12-12 16:58:41, David Obadia wrote:
> Not sure why ecryptfs-recover-private requires root, I've found a way to do the
> same thing without root.

A quick glance at that script shows that it needs root to do the
`mount -t ecryptfs ...` command. The main eCryptfs mount helper
(/sbin/mount.ecryptfs) is big and complex. It hasn't been security
audited and setting the setuid bit on it (which would give non-root
users sufficient privilege to perform generic eCryptfs mounts) is a bad
idea because there are likely security bugs in that program.

> 
> Also I think it would be helpful to have a user friendly API for
> creating/mounting/unmounting ecrypted folders that doesn't require root using
> the setuid in mount.ecryptfs_private.

That might be a nice thing to have, but we want mount.ecryptfs_private
to stay as simple as possible so that it can be audited and so that we
don't introduce new security flaws into the code. It is intentionally
locked down to do very specific actions.

Tyler

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