maxmind
Incorrect default permissions for /etc/GeoIP.conf (world-readable)
Since MaxMind does not offer any GeoIP/GeoLite data services anymore when not being registered with MaxMind, the current permissions of /etc/GeoIP.conf are incorrect from my point of view, because world-readable is too relaxed and causes by default the leak of the credentials to other local (unprivileged) Linux system users (who could copy them to third-party systems or whatever):
Name : geoipupdate
Epoch : 0
Version : 7.0.1
Release : 1
Architecture: x86_64
Install Date: (not installed)
Group :
Size : 5642415
License : Apache 2.0 or MIT
Signature : (none)
Source RPM : geoipupdate-7.0.1-1.src.rpm
Build Date : Mo 08 Apr 2024 23:30:08 CEST
Build Host : work
Packager : MaxMind, Inc. <[email protected]>
Vendor : MaxMind, Inc.
URL : https://www.maxmind.com/
Summary : Program to perform automatic updates of GeoIP2 and GeoLite2 binary databases.
Description :
Program to perform automatic updates of GeoIP2 and GeoLite2 binary databases.
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1913 Apr 8 23:30 /etc/GeoIP.conf
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5595288 Apr 8 23:30 /usr/bin/geoipupdate
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 0 Apr 8 23:30 /usr/share/GeoIP
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 13221 Apr 8 23:29 /usr/share/doc/geoipupdate/CHANGELOG.md
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1913 Apr 8 23:30 /usr/share/doc/geoipupdate/GeoIP.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3545 Apr 8 23:30 /usr/share/doc/geoipupdate/GeoIP.conf.md
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 11360 Apr 1 21:31 /usr/share/doc/geoipupdate/LICENSE-APACHE
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1023 Jul 31 2020 /usr/share/doc/geoipupdate/LICENSE-MIT
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4379 Apr 8 23:20 /usr/share/doc/geoipupdate/README.md
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2509 Apr 8 23:30 /usr/share/doc/geoipupdate/geoipupdate.md
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3083 Apr 8 23:30 /usr/share/man/man1/geoipupdate.1
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4181 Apr 8 23:30 /usr/share/man/man5/GeoIP.conf.5
From my point of view, the permissions should be 0640 instead of 0644 aka world-readable. System administrators that want to relax the permissions for specific purposes should explicitly do so themself.
I agree that it would be better if this file was not world-readable. This would likely be a breaking change for some users. We will likely hold off changing this until we release a new major version.
