Re: Fw: Security risk of vim swap files

[Jeffrey Walton <noloader () gmail com>]

On Wed, Nov 1, 2017 at 10:49 AM, Tim <tim-security () sentinelchicken org> wrote:
> > > Also, it almost never makes sense to put things in /tmp, for several
> > > reasons pointed out by others.  Making ~/.vim/... the default location
> > > clearly is the best solution.
> >
> > And all those reasons make no sense. /tmp has a sticky bit precisely so that
> > people could put stuff there, as opposed to /run.
>
> We've been spending decades fixing filesystem races that arise from
> cases where people use temporary files in world-writable directories.
> You have to get a half dozen things exactly correct in order to use
> /tmp.  Why take the risk?  Doesn't every normal (human) user account
> have a home directory that is already protected?

Some installs don't allow users to write to /tmp. For example, some
machines on GCC's compile farm do not allow it. I seem to recall the
error was a RO mount. Also see https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/CompileFarm.

Code and scripts certainly need to check TMPDIR and then have a
fallback strategy if it is missing.

Jeff