From f031aecee9d45d9604b87e9f26ca3e6252ff6a76 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Matthias Andree <matthias.andree@gmx.de>
Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2005 15:22:11 +0000
Subject: Add security thoughts.

svn path=/trunk/; revision=4144
---
 design-notes.html | 17 +++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 17 insertions(+)

(limited to 'design-notes.html')

diff --git a/design-notes.html b/design-notes.html
index ffd82bf8..149d67b4 100644
--- a/design-notes.html
+++ b/design-notes.html
@@ -33,6 +33,23 @@ ESR made previously, and the differences and new directions will be laid
 out in this document. It is therefore a sort of a TODO document, until
 the necessary code revisions have been made.</p>
 
+<h2>Security</h2>
+
+<p>Fetchmail was handed over in a pretty poor shape, security-wise. It will
+happily talk to the network with root privileges, use sscanf() to read
+remotely received data into fixed-length stack-based buffers without
+length limitation and so on. A full audit is required and security
+concepts will have to be applied. Random bits are:</p>
+
+<ul>
+    <li>code talking to the network does not require root privileges and
+    needs to run without root permissions</li>
+    <li>all input must be validated, all strings must be length checked,
+    all integers range checked</li>
+    <li>all types will need to be reviewed whether they are signed or
+    unsigned</li>
+</ul>
+
 <h2>SMTP forwarding</h2>
 
 <p>Fetchmails multidrop and rewrite options will process addresses
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