oss-sec mailing list archives
Re: xscreensaver package caps gets raw socket
From: Eli Schwartz <eschwartz () archlinux org>
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2021 14:31:30 -0400
On 4/19/21 2:15 PM, Ariadne Conill wrote:
Hello, On Mon, 19 Apr 2021, David A. Wheeler wrote:On Apr 18, 2021, at 8:25 AM, Simon McVittie <smcv () debian org> wrote: Scraping is undesirable, but sometimes needed. If this is a common need, a long-term solution might be to create an option on ping to generate a standard format that’s easier to machine-parse.On Apr 19, 2021, at 1:35 PM, Ariadne Conill <ariadne () dereferenced org> wrote: This already exists as fping(1), for example:The problem for application developers is that “ping” exists practically everywhere, while fping does not.Absolutely true, but fping is packaged in most Linux distributions, as well as all of the BSDs, due to its use by various network monitoring programs such as smokeping and nagios, so it seems like a reasonable dependency for cases like these. IMO, it's better that programs declare something like fping as a dependency, so that we don't have to deal with yet another program years from now having elevated privileges and being abused to run tcpdump... :) Seriously, if anyone on this list ever finds themselves writing a program where they need to fire off some pings, instead of making their program SUID or granting it cap_net_raw, just use fping instead. At the very least, you'll be happier because you don't have to write your own ping code, and the distribution maintainers of the world will be happier because you *didn't* write your own ping code.
Also fping is the standard fping, but there is no standard ping so one would need to coordinate adding the option to a number of different descendant forks of 4.3BSD ping, before it could be reliably used. If the answer to your question is ever "for X number of independent implementations of Y, add the same new feature to all of them", then the problem will not be coming up with wonderful ideas to solve problems -- the problem will be getting people to implement those wonderful ideas. -- Eli Schwartz Arch Linux Bug Wrangler and Trusted User
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Current thread:
- xscreensaver package caps gets raw socket Tavis Ormandy (Apr 17)
- Re: xscreensaver package caps gets raw socket Tavis Ormandy (Apr 17)
- Re: xscreensaver package caps gets raw socket Érico Nogueira (Apr 18)
- Re: xscreensaver package caps gets raw socket Solar Designer (Apr 18)
- Re: xscreensaver package caps gets raw socket Alan Coopersmith (Apr 18)
- Re: xscreensaver package caps gets raw socket Simon McVittie (Apr 18)
- Re: xscreensaver package caps gets raw socket David A. Wheeler (Apr 19)
- Re: xscreensaver package caps gets raw socket Ariadne Conill (Apr 19)
- Re: xscreensaver package caps gets raw socket David A. Wheeler (Apr 19)
- Re: xscreensaver package caps gets raw socket Ariadne Conill (Apr 19)
- Re: xscreensaver package caps gets raw socket Eli Schwartz (Apr 19)
- Re: xscreensaver package caps gets raw socket Stuart Henderson (Apr 19)
- Re: xscreensaver package caps gets raw socket David A. Wheeler (Apr 19)