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Date: Sat, 01 Jan 2022 22:57:57 +0000
From: "Daniel Edgecumbe" <email@esotericnonsense.com>
To: "M.K. Safi via bitcoin-dev" <bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org>
Content-Type: text/plain
Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Nuke *notify options from Bitcoin Core
Precedence: list

I've looked at these PR's and they seem, frankly, bizarre.

You've essentially noticed that if an attacker can run commands on your system, they can run commands on your system.

If you can convince someone to run arbitrary commands, which is what a desktop shortcut or a command argument _is_ at a fundamental level, you own their system. I fail to see how this has anything to do with Core at all.

Daniel Edgecumbe | esotericnonsense
email@esotericnonsense.com | https://esotericnonsense.com

On Sat, Jan 1, 2022, at 21:03, Prayank via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> Hello World,
>
> What?
>
> Remove all *notify options from Bitcoin Core (full node implementation 
> used by 99% nodes)
>
> Or one of the below:
>
> notifications.dat
> not use system() in runCommand()
> Use a new setting in settings.json file, notifypolicy which is 0 by 
> default (restricted) and can be set to 1 (unrestricted)
>
> Why?
>
> They can help attackers in doing almost anything on machines running 
> Bitcoin Core with some social engineering.
>
> How?
>
> Everything is explained several times in different issues, PRs etc. to 
> different people including few reviewers who even NACKed a PR that 
> would help in adding such options but with some documentation. I won't 
> comment much about the reviewers but some of them were clueless about 
> issue and how things work.
>
> Example: Calling something misleading and ludicrous when you don't even 
> know what works in Windows shortcut and could not share one example of 
> financial application 
> https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/23412#issuecomment-1003496126
>
> TL;DR
>
> https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/23395#issuecomment-956353035
>
> https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/23412#issuecomment-970480769
>
> To be honest, neither I have energy left to highlight the importance of 
> these issues nor most of the people look interested in this space to 
> address it. This email is a part of my efforts to share things with 
> everyone which I even tried with documentation. There is something 
> seriously wrong if few people including maintainers acknowledge the 
> issues with *notify options but nobody wants to fix it or document it, 
> I will leave it for people to form their own opinions about it.
>
> Last but not least I was even asked to not review and comment in 
> https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/23395 when I was just 
> responding to others. 
>
> This will be helpful in my security project which was already shared in 
> mailing list to highlight what users expect from developers and future 
> of money, review process etc. and what is the ground reality.
>
> Happy New Year
>
> -- 
> Prayank
>
> A3B1 E430 2298 178F
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