2.6 KiB
UNDF: UNDF-2026-000001224
dbus 5-MOAD scan — 2026-04-03
Source: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/dbus/dbus (depth=1) Focus: bus/ (message dispatch, activation, policy), dbus/ (auth, protocol)
MOAD-0001 (CWE-407): DEFECT — dbus-0001
bus/policy.c bus_client_policy_optimize() runs on every new connection to
eliminate shadowed policy rules. For each blanket-deny/allow rule (one with no
field constraints), it calls remove_rules_by_type_up_to() which walks the
full rules list from the beginning up to the current position. Total complexity
is O(R^2) where R = total rules in the client policy.
A system bus configuration with 100 rules per connection produces ~10,000 comparisons per new connection. Under a workload that creates and destroys many connections (container start/stop, session bus churn), this accumulates.
See dbus-0001-policy-optimize-o-n2.patch and dbus-0001-TICKET.md for full
analysis.
Other CWE-407 candidates reviewed:
bus/signals.cmatch rule dispatch: uses hash table indexed by (message_type, interface) — pre-filtered, O(1) dispatch. CLEAN.bus/activation.cservice activation dedup: usespending_activationshash table to coalesce duplicate requests. CLEAN.bus/config-parser.cservice_dirs_find_dir: O(D^2) during config load but D is small (< 20 dirs). LOW severity, startup only. CLEAN.bus/services.cowner list scan: O(N) per ownership transfer. N = number of owners of a single service name, always very small. CLEAN.
MOAD-0002 (Intertangle): CLEAN
BusContext in bus/bus.h is a well-scoped daemon context object holding
all bus state. This is the standard single-daemon pattern, not a god object
spanning independent subsystems. The sub-objects (BusPolicy, BusActivation,
BusRegistry, BusMatchmaker, BusConnections) have clean interfaces. CLEAN.
MOAD-0003 (Leaked Context): CLEAN
dbus-daemon is single-threaded (main loop in bus/main.c using a custom
event loop). No pthread_getspecific, thread_local, or __thread in
bus/. CLEAN.
MOAD-0004 (CWE-312 Logged Secret): CLEAN
All SASL auth logging (dbus-auth.c) uses _dbus_verbose() which compiles
to a no-op unless DBUS_ENABLE_VERBOSE_MODE is set at build time. Production
dbus binaries do not enable this flag. The dbus-daemon-launch-helper and
activation paths log only service names and error codes. CLEAN.
MOAD-0005 (Thundering Herd): CLEAN
dbus-daemon is single-threaded. Service activation uses pending_activations
hash table to coalesce multiple concurrent activation requests for the same
service into a single launch, preventing herd behavior. CLEAN.