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Laurent Bercotska@treehouse.systems
Sep 23, 2026, 8:32 AM
- using glib
- using strdup
- on an argv element, which will be available for the whole lifetime of the program
- you cannot see it here without the full context, but it loops around n while path is defined outside of the loop, so it needs to free on every iteration or it just overwrites path and leaks
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Replies

Laurent Bercotska@treehouse.systems
Sep 23, 2026, 8:40 AM
Let me kill the suspense: it is pkexec https://github.com/polkit-org/polkit/blob/main/src/programs/pkexec.c#L663
The entirety of the polkit code is like this.
"Bro, how many strdups do I need?"
"Yes."
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Laurent Bercotska@treehouse.systems
Sep 23, 2026, 8:44 AM
Does anyone understand how this works at first glance? Isn't a picture supposed to be worth a thousand words? I'd need a thousand words just to describe this picture.
(Transparency unedited. Image straight from the fdo website.)
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Laurent Bercotska@treehouse.systems
Sep 23, 2026, 8:58 AM
I originally just wanted to see how polkit uses PAM, how it interacts with it, check that there isn't some kind of dark voodoo happening since they share some common goals.
What I'm finding is more reasons to stay away from polkit in case you didn't have enough of them.
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Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell:lanodan@queer.hacktivis.me
Sep 23, 2026, 3:24 PM
@ska I guess there must be an image editor that's very arcane to use and they accidentally pressed the keys about transparency and shadows, and didn't know where the undo button is.

Or maybe just "graphic design is my passion" gone terribly wrong.
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sarah tonin :wlfBlep:SRAZKVT@tech.lgbt
Sep 23, 2026, 3:39 PM
@lanodan @ska maybe they straight up didn't notice bc image edited on a white background
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Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell:lanodan@queer.hacktivis.me
Sep 23, 2026, 3:45 PM
@SRAZKVT @ska Right… reminds me that not all image editors default to showing a checkerboard pattern when there's full transparency going on.
(inkscape most notably, which is specially weird when SVG very much pushes transparency on you, unlike PNG/JPEG/…)
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David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)david_chisnall@infosec.exchange
Sep 23, 2026, 9:59 AM
@ska
The argv array is mutable, so there's an argument for defensive copies if something else in the program might mutate them. But that just raises even more questions.
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Laurent Bercotska@treehouse.systems
Sep 23, 2026, 11:41 AM
@david_chisnall Indeed, I always tend to forget that argv is mutable, because mutating it is another code smell 😅
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Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell:lanodan@queer.hacktivis.me
Sep 23, 2026, 3:35 PM
@ska @david_chisnall Plus well, even with argv being mutable, it's not something that libraries can modify sneakily since you need to pass it as pointer to function calls for them to do so.

(Not that this concern should ever exists in security-critical programs, but it's polkit where even the list of dependencies is a smell)
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