getpid() or something similar

[Derek Elkins]

On Thu, 22 May 2003 09:47:08 -0700
John Meacham <john@repetae.net> wrote:

> On Thu, May 22, 2003 at 12:21:10PM -0400, Derek Elkins wrote:
> > Why do you need such a unique name, using the open call you can
> > always choose another if it already exists.  One way or the other
> > you still need to atomically check for security reasons, no matter
> > how unique your name is your code shouldn't rely on the file not
> > being created between checking and creation, uniqueness means little
> > for a malicious attack. Simply using a random number generator would
> > seem sufficient, though I'd probably do, at least, progname++num,
> > though more so that the user can see what's related to what (if
> > files get left around) than on the off chance of 4 billion
> > numerically named files.
> 
> like someone else mentioned, NFS (and probably some other filesystems)
> have wierd semantics where O_CREAT | O_EXCL don't work properly
> always. on such broken filesystems there is not much you can do, but
> to make the system as robust as possible one should use everything at
> their disposal.

As you say in that case, there's nothing you can do, however, the long
filename does nothing to raise security, which was my focus.

> I should also mention that I didn't just make up the previous formula
> for 'robust' temporary files. they are used in various applications
> and that is 'best common practice'. see the Maildir format for another
> example.

I'm didn't say that it was a bad idea or that you made it up, just seems
like overkill (but if computer/video games have taught me anything,
overkill is good).  However, the main reason for my response, was the
reply slightly gave the impression that the long filename itself was
good enough.  I just wanted to make clear that that is NOT the case
(well part of my reply).  The other part is just that I suspect that
many programs can reasonably (though it does make some presumptions
on the use) get by without such a gung ho effort.

> as for 32bit random numbers being sufficient, I have one technical
> argument against it and one anecdote. The technical argument is called
> 'the birthday attack', a web search will provide lots of info on it.
> The upshot is the 32 bits is not nearly as secure as you think because
> probability does not work the way our intuition says. The anecdote
> involved a certain distributed operating system which when booted,
> would wait a random amount of time to connect to the server since
> there would be many machines, and all of them connecting at once would
> wedge the server. all seemed well until their first power outage, the
> power came back up and 3 minutes later the whole system came tumbling
> down much to their surprise. their random number generator was seeded
> from their clock, since the power came on for all systems at the same
> time, all the random number generators were seeded with the same value
> and hence the first thing that came out of them was the same for every
> system. The moral, random numbers arn't always random :) 
[[ On computers, random numbers are rarely random ]]

I'm aware of what the birthday attack is.  I also thought up this
problem on a smaller scale, of simply starting two instances at the same
time and seeding based on time (moral here is "Don't seed on time in
this case!" and as a side note "Don't use that generator anymore, if
knowledge of the random numbers has security value"). On the small
scale, it's not too much of a problem, especially if relatively few temp
files are used. I'm not sure how extreme this scenario would have to get
for it to be a real problem. It'd certainly depend on the application.

"The upshot is the 32 bits is not nearly as secure as you think ..."

Taking the you personally, whether you meant that or not, I didn't put
forth my views on it's security.  On non-broken filesystems, the random
number would have no security benefit.  However, even on broken
filesystems, the random number would be no less secure than the long
filename (especially if the count always started at some known number
and/or incremented a known amount).  You'd have me on robustness though,
I was focusing on the security aspect.