saltstack / saltstack/salt

[BUG] Bad security ACL examples

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#57,874 2 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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bug doc-rework documentation help-wanted severity-medium time-estimate-single-day
Dominant language
Python
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Description

https://github.com/saltstack/salt/blob/v3001/doc/topics/eauth/access_control.rst#examples

The way it's written implies that pkg.* matches all functions in the pkg module, but it also matches everything in pkg_resource, pkgin, pkgng, and pkgutil.

Using regular expressions instead of globs for a string that's expected to contain dots was perhaps a mistake.

It may also be worth mentioning: if you have access to the pkg module, you can easily escalate that to root access on a linux minion. Or a more generic warning: many modules may allow arbitrary escalation on the minion, especially if the minion process runs as root.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

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

Open doc/topics/eauth/access_control.rst and read the Examples section linked in the issue. Verify how the ACL pattern is interpreted, then revise the example so its matching scope is accurate and add the requested privilege-escalation warning. Confirm the documentation build or relevant documentation checks pass.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Domain
authorization, documentation, security
Issue type
Documentation
Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Clearly specified
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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