Re: RFC: Adding a SECURITY.md document to the Binutils

DJ Delorie via Gdb
2023-04-14T19:47:57Z

Ian Lance Taylor via Gdb <gdb@sourceware.org> writes:
> Compilers and linkers must behave in a reasonable manner when given
> untrusted input.

Are we confusing trusted with well-behaved? I mean, if I download a
source tree from the FSF's git server, I trust it, but it may still be
ill-behaved. Meanwhile, sources from a public mailing list may be
well-behaved but not trusted.

I'm only posting this because Carlos and I had long discussions about
this before we set up the glibc pre-commit CI. This process takes
random patches from the public glibc mailing list, and builds them.
WHOA! That's dangerous! Yes. The patches may produce well-defined
code, but are not trusted. Those builds run in a tight sandbox to
mitigate any attack attempts. Security here is outside the scope of the
build tools. I don't expect gcc to scan for viruses or prevent people
from doing "#include </etc/passwd>".