Re: rm-ing files with open file descriptors

[Kai Henningsen]

[e-mail] (Alexander Viro)  wrote on 19.01.02 in <[e-mail]>:

> On Sat, 19 Jan 2002, Miquel van Smoorenburg wrote:
>
> > This could be hacked around ofcourse in fs/namei.c, so I tried
> > it for fun. And indeed, with a minor correction it works:
> >
> > % perl flink.pl
> > Success.
> >
> > I now have a flink-test2.txt file. That is pretty cool ;)
>
> It's also a security hole.

It may well be one when going via /proc. But is it one when going via a  
(hypothetical) proper flink(2)? If so, why?

Note that every process who has a filehandle open for reading can already  
get at the file contents and write them to a completely new file, and  
every process who has it open for writing can already change its contents  
to everything it likes. So I can see read|write checks on the file handle.  
Also all the usual link(2) checks. What else could be a hole?

MfG Kai