[Xastir] Trap for Young and Old

[Jason KG4WSV]

On Wed, Jun 18, 2014 at 2:00 PM, Curt, WE7U <curt.we7u at gmail.com> wrote:
> Xastir does this, but would you want to trust security of your system to a
> bunch of hobbyists?  ;-)

'cause that's not something linux users are familiar with. :|

> We do what we can, but I wouldn't say Xastir has been thoroughly gone
> through from a security standpoint.  It's better than a lot of programs, as
> we took care when writing/modifying that portion of code, but there are no
> guarantees.

Yeah, and there's another lever of problems/challenges running SUID
root (or SUID anything for that matter), and it really shouldn't be
the xastir team's problem to give it that sort of scrutiny - it's
complicated enough without dealing with changing EUIDs as you go
along.

> Technically it isn't a problem:  The AX.25 networking port is implemented
> similarly to ethernet ports in terms of permissions.
>
> For Xastir to be able to access the port, it needs root privileges.

So you can't just chmod 666 /dev/ax25 (or whatever) so that xastir can
access it running as joe user?


-Jason
kg4wsv