KDE Wallet Manager: Once a wallet is open an application has access to all passwords there?

[Jonathan Verner]

This problem has been bugging me too and I don't think that it should
be dismissed so easily. Suppose malware started being more common on
linux. Then a malware author would find the kde wallet to be a treasure
trove. Of course, one could keep the wallet locked at all times and enter the
password whenever an application needed access, but that (in my opinion)
kind of defeats the purpose. 

When I was originally thinking about this problem, the wallet was accessed
directly by each application (if I understood correctly) which meant that 
there was no way to prevent an application to access whatever it wanted. 

However, now that the wallet is accessed over D-Bus (if I understand 
correctly) and that D-Bus supports getting the process ID of the connecting 
side (at least on UNIX there is the function 
dbus_connection_get_unix_process_id) the access to a given folder could
be granted based on the executable file (/proc/PID/exe) of the requesting 
process. This should prevent local unprivileged attacks. An attacker
with rw access to, e.g. /usr/bin, would still get the passwords, of course.

Is there something I am missing or would this be feasible?

Jonathan Verner


On 13. 11. 2013 FF <fafisfriend at ya.com> wrote:
> Thanks, Eike, for your time and explanation.
> 
> But I do not feel any better. The thing is that, e.g., I do not want
> Netbeans accessing my Kontact related passwords.
> 
> For the moment I have seen that I can use two wallets (KDE System Settings
> -> Account Details -> KDE Wallet) and now I have separated both worlds.
> 
> Maybe having a wallet for each sofware vendor would sould safer...