5.4. File Names

The names of files can, in certain circumstances, cause serious problems. This is especially a problem for secure programs that run on computers with local untrusted users, but this isn't limited to that circumstance. Remote users may be able to trick a program into creating undesirable filenames (programs should prevent this, but not all do), or remote users may have partially penetrated a system and try using this trick to penetrate the rest of the system.

Usually you will want to not include ``..'' (higher directory) as a legal value from an untrusted user, though that depends on the circumstances. You might also want to list only the characters you will permit, and forbidding any filenames that don't match the list. It's best to prohibit any change in directory, e.g., by not including ``/'' in the set of legal characters, if you're taking data from an external user and transforming it into a filename.

Often you shouldn't support ``globbing'', that is, expanding filenames using ``*'', ``?'', ``['' (matching ``]''), and possibly ``{'' (matching ``}''). For example, the command ``ls *.png'' does a glob on ``*.png'' to list all PNG files. The C fopen(3) command (for example) doesn't do globbing, but the command shells perform globbing by default, and in C you can request globbing using (for example) glob(3). If you don't need globbing, just use the calls that don't do it where possible (e.g., fopen(3)) and/or disable them (e.g., escape the globbing characters in a shell). Be especially careful if you want to permit globbing. Globbing can be useful, but complex globs can take a great deal of computing time. For example, on some ftp servers, performing a few of these requests can easily cause a denial-of-service of the entire machine:
ftp> ls */../*/../*/../*/../*/../*/../*/../*/../*/../*/../*/../*/../*
Trying to allow globbing, yet limit globbing patterns, is probably futile. Instead, make sure that any such programs run as a separate process and use process limits to limit the amount of CPU and other resources they can consume. See Section 7.4.8 for more information on this approach, and see Section 3.6 for more information on how to set these limits.

Unix-like systems generally forbid including the NIL character in a filename (since this marks the end of the name) and the '/' character (since this is the directory separator). However, they often permit anything else, which is a problem; it is easy to write programs that can be subverted by cleverly-created filenames.

Filenames that can especially cause problems include: