From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S265925AbUBRAWk (ORCPT ); Tue, 17 Feb 2004 19:22:40 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S266887AbUBRAWQ (ORCPT ); Tue, 17 Feb 2004 19:22:16 -0500 Received: from fw.osdl.org ([65.172.181.6]:25565 "EHLO mail.osdl.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S265925AbUBRAUd (ORCPT ); Tue, 17 Feb 2004 19:20:33 -0500 Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 16:20:26 -0800 (PST) From: Linus Torvalds To: Robert White cc: tridge@samba.org, "'Kernel Mailing List'" , "'Al Viro'" , "'Neil Brown'" Subject: RE: UTF-8 and case-insensitivity In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Tue, 17 Feb 2004, Robert White wrote: > > OK, so I wrote the below, but then in the summary I realized that there was > a significant factor that doesn't fit in with the rest of the post. Case > insensitivity, and more generally locale equivalence rules, is a security > nightmare. Consider the number of different file names that "su" could map > to if you apply case insensitivity (4) and/or worse yet the various accents > and umlats (?,etc) that sort-equivalent for "u" in some locales. The user > types "su" and runs "S(u-umlat)" etc. This is but one reason why I will _refuse_ to make case insensitivity magically start happening on regular "open()" etc calls. You'd literally have to use a _different_ system call to do a case-insensitive file open. Exactly because anything else would be very confusing to existing apps (and thus be potential security holes). Linus