trifectatechfoundation / trifectatechfoundation/sudo-rs

Be pedantic about disrecommended practices

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Dominant language
Rust
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Description

There are some well-known anti-patterns in sudo, that the man page warns about; for instance using the negation operator with commands in rules like:

user machine = (ALL:ALL) ALL,!/bin/ls

We can detect those after parsing, during the semantical analysis (where also already complain about alias definitions that appear to be cyclical, etc), and emit a diagnostic about them (while still supporting said behaviour)

This has some subtasks:

  • Inventorise all the disrecommended sudoer-practices (either from the manpage or the wider internet)
  • Implement them during the analysis phase

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

Start with the sudo man page and related guidance to inventory the disrecommended sudoers practices, including negated commands such as !/bin/ls. Then review the parsing and semantic-analysis stages, including existing cyclical-alias diagnostics, and define diagnostics that warn without changing supported behavior. Done means the practices are documented, implemented during analysis, and covered by appropriate tests.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
rust
Domain
cli, security
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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