Re: [PATCH] ldd: Do not recommend binutils as the safer option

[Alejandro Colomar <alx@kernel.org>]

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Hi Siddhesh,

On Mon, Oct 16, 2023 at 02:19:23AM -0400, Siddhesh Poyarekar wrote:
> The binutils security policy[1] states that diagnostic tools should not
> be expected to be safe without sandboxing, so it doesn't make sense to
> recommend it as the alternative to ldd, especially since it is not a
> drop-in replacement.  Recommend sandboxing instead, since that is in
> fact the safest known way at the moment to deal with untrusted binaries.
> 
> [1] https://sourceware.org/git/?p=binutils-gdb.git;a=blob;f=binutils/SECURITY.txt
> 
> Signed-off-by: Siddhesh Poyarekar <siddhesh@gotplt.org>
> ---
>  man1/ldd.1 | 14 +-------------
>  1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 13 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/man1/ldd.1 b/man1/ldd.1
> index cca96ec4d..f86798566 100644
> --- a/man1/ldd.1
> +++ b/man1/ldd.1
> @@ -94,20 +94,8 @@ Thus, you should
>  .I never
>  employ
>  .B ldd
> -on an untrusted executable,
> +on an untrusted executable without appropriate sandboxing,
>  since this may result in the execution of arbitrary code.
> -A safer alternative when dealing with untrusted executables is:
> -.PP
> -.in +4n
> -.EX
> -$ \fBobjdump \-p /path/to/program | grep NEEDED\fP

Should we maybe keep this example, and suggest using it with sandboxing?
Or is it not useful anymore?

Thanks,
Alex

> -.EE
> -.in
> -.PP
> -Note, however, that this alternative shows only the direct dependencies
> -of the executable, while
> -.B ldd
> -shows the entire dependency tree of the executable.
>  .SH OPTIONS
>  .TP
>  .B \-\-version
> -- 
> 2.41.0


-- 
<https://www.alejandro-colomar.es/>

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