From: Justin Mason (jm at domain jmason.org)
Date: Tue 17 Sep 2002 - 18:43:03 IST
Colm MacC rthaigh said:
> > I want to execute applications and pass them the credentials they
> > need to access a database, but not have that data visible to the
> > rest of the world via the process list.
>
> Most DB's do this by implementing a -p option that with no
> argument will prompt you for the password, that's a much
> better way of doing it and will complete avoid the
> race conditions you'll create. I think there's actually a
> copy kept , in /proc or something of the initial arguments
> anyway.
And there'd be a race condition, too, where they'd still be
visible until the app ran its "clean argv" code.
You're better off using
(a) a temporary file, mode 600, or
(b) env variables. still not quite safe though, I think
root or the same user could use a "ps" arg to see these, or
(c) echo it into the app on STDIN or another inherited
filehandle.
--j.
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