Taint mechanism

[Olivier Sarrouy]

Hi everyone,

I would like to ask a few question about the taint mechanism of ruby.

It seems that ruby taint mechanism doesn't care about indirect dataflow
to propagate the taint. For instance, if you got :

myVar1 = ARGV[0] <-- tainted

if myVar1 == "alice"
myVar2 = "Bob"
else
myVar2 = "Eve"
end

myVar2 should be tainted as there is an indirect dataflow from myVar1,
which is tainted, to myVar2. So I think it would be of a great thing to
be able to tackle indirect data flow, in order to be able to "prove"
some security properties on ruby programs.

Is this a choice from ruby core developers or would it be a potential
feature for the next ruby version ?


Thanks to all

Olivier

 

[Olivier Sarrouy]

Hi,

Well, i understand. It may look like it's a shame that you can't assure
no security properties based on that taint mechanism, but i understand
how complex nad costly it is to build a reliable indirect dataflow
analyser.

Nevermind, thanks for your answers and long life to ruby

Olivier