Abstract
Dean and Hu proposed a probabilistic countermeasure to the classic access(2)/open(2) TOCTTOU race condition in privileged Unix programs [4]. In this paper, we describe an attack that succeeds with very high probability against their countermeasure. We then consider a stronger randomized variant of their defense and show that it, too, is broken. We conclude that access(2) must never be used in privileged Unix programs. The tools we develop can be used to attack other filesystem races, underscoring the importance of avoiding such races in secure software.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages | 303-314 |
Number of pages | 12 |
State | Published - 2005 |
Externally published | Yes |
Event | 14th USENIX Security Symposium - Baltimore, United States Duration: Jul 31 2005 → Aug 5 2005 |
Conference
Conference | 14th USENIX Security Symposium |
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Country/Territory | United States |
City | Baltimore |
Period | 7/31/05 → 8/5/05 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Computer Networks and Communications
- Information Systems
- Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality