ParetoSecurity / ParetoSecurity/agent

Feature request: Check if there are non-root users in nix `trusted-users`

Open
#150 2 comments 1 reaction 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

enhancement nixos
Dominant language
Go
Stars
46
Forks
5
Avg merge
1h 6m
Merged PRs (30d)
1

Description

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Having non-root users in system nix.conf trusted-users is a trivially exploitable local privilege escalation vulnerability. It gives root access without password. See https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/9649#issuecomment-1868001568

This is a feature request for a new check to be added to paretosecurity that checks for this vulnerability.

Describe the solution you'd like

If nix is detected, check whether there are non-root users in trusted-users in /etc/nix/nix.conf.

Describe alternatives you've considered

I do not see any alternative.

Additional context

Nix manual entry on the setting includes a warning:
https://nix.dev/manual/nix/2.24/command-ref/conf-file.html#conf-trusted-users

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by locating how paretosecurity detects Nix, then inspect the requested system configuration at /etc/nix/nix.conf and the trusted-users setting. Done means the check identifies non-root users in trusted-users when Nix is present and reports the security problem clearly.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
go
Domain
operating-systems, security
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
45/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.