security alerts in busybox

[Hans Ulli Kroll]

On Fri, 2026-04-24 at 16:40 +0200, Roberto A. Foglietta via busybox
wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Using a static code analyser, I found:
> 
> Open potentially alerts by severity/class in branch `main`:
> 
> - **security**: 103 critical, 96 high, 4 medium, **203 total**
> 
> Alerts above are related to C-language code, none otherwise.
> 
> Are these false positives? Well, it is more about corner cases like
> using the applet in a strong parallel mode like xargs -p8 does. If
> used for maintenance on a large enough infrastructure, the corner case
> has a chance to be met, for example.
> 
> https://github.com/robang74/busybox/commits/security/
> 
> commit f69e57f62798ae2bca9f5071adb45bfb002002b1 (HEAD -> security,
> origin/security)
> Author: Roberto A. Foglietta <roberto.foglietta at gmail.com>
> Date:   Fri Apr 24 15:33:58 2026 +0200
> 
>     util-linux/ipcs.c: use of potentially dangerous function (fix)
> 
>     Alerts: #96-93,91,88-83,81-77
> 
>     +:git-shell:security:busybox> size busybox
>        text    data     bss     dec     hex filename
>     1155501   18124    2056 1175681  11f081 busybox
>     1155670   18132    2056 1175858  11f132 busybox
>                                +177
> 
> These are trivial alerts, therefore I faced it first to provide an
> example. And the second main question is straightforward: does this
> fix worth 177 bytes? In relative terms it is 150 ppm compared with the
> full size footprint. In terms of certifications is a solid step
> towards peace of mind.
> 
> Best regards, R-
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> busybox at busybox.net
> https://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox

besides the ongoing discussion ...
which may or may not helpful 

your commit message makes no sense.

YES I can read the code too,
writing fixing "something" is not helpful

you have to be descriptive !
i.e for 
use of function() because ...

Also you can "group" the fixes/files together, for one solution !

If you have different fixes in one file, they should be different
patches.

Make it logical, as my professors said during my studies.

Maybe it's possible to write a libbb function as a wrapper, to make the
text size smaller.

Ulli