Development record
The guard's WRAPPER set has the same incomplete-enumeration shape gh-297 fixed for interpreters. gh-297 made the execute-a-string INTERPRETER family one shared predicate (sh, bash, dash, zsh, ksh, mksh, ash). The wrappers map in internal/core/guard/match.go is a separate list of commands that merely exec another, and it omits several that are equally ordinary: nice (and 'nice -n 5'), setsid, flock, stdbuf, ionice, unshare, chroot, and busybox sh -c / busybox ash -c. Each is a silent allow today for every bundled blocker -- and equally so before gh-297 with plain sh, so none is introduced by that change. Also absent from BOTH sets: su -c '<hazard>', runuser -c '<hazard>' and script -c '<hazard>' /dev/null, which are execute-a-string interpreters in exactly the sense gh-297's rationale describes (each runs its -c operand with the grammar the tokenizer already parses) but are not shells, so they belong in neither list as currently shaped. The realistic ones are nice, setsid, busybox sh and su -c. Out of scope by contrast: ssh host '<cmd>' and docker run img sh -c '<cmd>' execute on a different host or namespace. Note for whoever takes this: gh-297's comment now says explicitly that 'nowhere left to widen' covers the interpreter set only, not the wrapper set, so the claim and this gap do not contradict each other. Found by the security review of gh-297.
The guard's WRAPPER set has the same incomplete-enumeration shape gh-297 fixed for interpreters. gh-297 made the execute-a-string INTERPRETER family one shared predicate (sh, bash, dash, zsh, ksh, mksh, ash). The wrappers map in internal/core/guard/match.go is a separate list of commands that merely exec another, and it omits several that are equally ordinary: nice (and 'nice -n 5'), setsid, flock, stdbuf, ionice, unshare, chroot, and busybox sh -c / busybox ash -c. Each is a silent allow today for every bundled blocker -- and equally so before gh-297 with plain sh, so none is introduced by that change. Also absent from BOTH sets: su -c '<hazard>', runuser -c '<hazard>' and script -c '<hazard>' /dev/null, which are execute-a-string interpreters in exactly the sense gh-297's rationale describes (each runs its -c operand with the grammar the tokenizer already parses) but are not shells, so they belong in neither list as currently shaped. The realistic ones are nice, setsid, busybox sh and su -c. Out of scope by contrast: ssh host '<cmd>' and docker run img sh -c '<cmd>' execute on a different host or namespace. Note for whoever takes this: gh-297's comment now says explicitly that 'nowhere left to widen' covers the interpreter set only, not the wrapper set, so the claim and this gap do not contradict each other. Found by the security review of gh-297.
Frontmatter
| id | iss-272 |
|---|---|
| type | issue |
| lifecycle | resolved |
| severity | minor |
.abcd/work/issues/resolved/iss-272-the-guard-s-wrapper-set-has-the-same.md
open on GitHub ↗ · commit history ↗
mentions4
- adr-42The guard's parse layer is a mistake filter, not a security boundary — matching is two-tier, and completeness is abandoned as a goal
- dcn-26081800000000012026-08-18 — The guard's parse layer is a MISTAKE FILTER, not a security boundary
- dcn-26081800000000032026-08-18 — adr-42 parts B and C built; iss-272 closed. Part B named fourteen wrappers
- iss-291abcd guard silently allows a blocker whose exec-string verb carries a value-taking short-flag cluster before the payload flag (script -Tc out.txt -c '<blocker>'): clusteredPayload accepts the cluster without consulting the verb's value flags, mis-reads -Tc as -T -c, resolves a bogus payload and switches the Tier-2 fail-safe off for the segment