TTY: do not update atime/mtime on read/write
On http://vladz.devzero.fr/013_ptmx-timing.php, we can see how to find
out length of a password using timestamps of /dev/ptmx. It is
documented in "Timing Analysis of Keystrokes and Timing Attacks on
SSH". To avoid that problem, do not update time when reading
from/writing to a TTY.
I am afraid of regressions as this is a behavior we have since 0.97
and apps may expect the time to be current, e.g. for monitoring
whether there was a change on the TTY. Now, there is no change. So
this would better have a lot of testing before it goes upstream.
References: CVE-2013-0160
Signed-off-by: Jiri Slaby <jslaby@suse.cz>
Cc: stable <stable@vger.kernel.org> # after 3.9 is out
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
1 file changed