_SECURE_PATH(3)

🎀 NAME 🎀

_secure_path — determine if a file appears to be secure

okay bestie, this is the _SECURE_PATH(3) page from the Library Functions Manual ✨ it’s giving “should I trust this file or nah?” energy, and honestly that is such a mood.

📚 LIBRARY 📚

System Utilities Library (libutil, -lutil) 🫶

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

#include <sys/types.h>
#include <libutil.h>

int
_secure_path(const char *path, uid_t uid, gid_t gid);

💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

so _secure_path() does some basic security checking on a path. It’s meant for processes running with root privileges so they can decide whether or not to trust the contents of a given file. It uses a method often used to detect system compromise 👀

A file is considered “secure” if it meets these conditions:

1. The file exists, and is a regular file (not a symlink, device special or named pipe, etc.) 🚫🔗
2. It is not world writable. 🌍❌
3. It is owned by the given uid or uid 0, if uid is not -1 👑
4. It is not group writable or it has group ownership by the given gid, if gid is not -1 👯

🌈 RETURN VALUES 🌈

• zero if the file exists and may be considered secure ✅
• -2 if the file does not exist 😭
• -1 otherwise to indicate a security failure 💀

The syslog(3) function is used to log any failure of this function, including the reason, at LOG_ERR priority 📝

🔎 SEE ALSO 🔎

• lstat(2)
• syslog(3)

🦋 HISTORY 🦋

Code from which this function was derived was contributed to the FreeBSD project by Berkeley Software Design, Inc. The function _secure_path() first appeared in FreeBSD 2.2.5 🎀

💀 BUGS 💀

⚠️ bestie, the checks carried out are rudimentary and no attempt is made to eliminate race conditions between use of this function and access to the file referenced. so like… it’s not a full-body security scan, okay? 😭

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xoxo, this page is brought to you by Debian, dated May 10, 2020 💖