Re: New method to load user bundles

[Pascal Bourguignon]

Jeff Teunissen writes:
> Adam Fedor wrote:
> 
> > Jeff Teunissen wrote:
> > > Adam Fedor wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > >>I added a function to NSApplication to load user bundles into a gui
> > >>program. You can define bundles to load as an array of path names:
> > >>
> > >>defaults write NSGlobalDomain GSAppKitUserBundles "(/foo, /bar)"
> > >
> > >
> > > How can this be disabled? (this is a Very Bad Thing in many instances)
> > >
> > 
> > Well, you could not use it...
> 
> No, I can't just "not use it". How can it be disabled -- how can it be
> made to not work? This is potentially important. Some applications need to
> be able to retain/manage their own integrity, especially since a loaded
> bundle can essentially rewrite the app. As for my own apps, I couldn't
> really care less...because my apps are free software and they already load
> bundles as part of their normal functionality...but that's not the point
> at all.
> 
> You may not have realized it here, but you are setting a policy here that
> tells app authors "You have no right to control how your code runs".
> 
> Bundles ain't just plugins, well-defined chunks of code that you get to
> tell what to do. They are active entities, able to do anything the app or
> any of the libs can...and there's no way of preventing them from doing
> anything at all, short of not loading them in the first place...

Yes, this is very important.  A  whole class of viruses and malware on
MacOS could run this way,  merey being present in some resource files,
because the system would open them automatically and they would shadow
application resources.

You cannot let code being automatically loaded and run like that!

If we  allow the  user to configure  such a  GSAppKitUserBundles, that
means that  he could download  unconspiciously some malware  doing the
same.  Then a suid application  should have the mean to protect itself
from such malware.


-- 
__Pascal_Bourguignon__                   http://www.informatimago.com/
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