libvirt runs dnsmasq as user nobody

libvirt uses dnsmasq to provide dns services to the guest vms; however, it starts dnsmasq under user nobody:

  $ ps auwwx | grep dnsmasq
  nobody 2117 0.0 0.0 25956 940 ? S 14:31 0:00 /usr/sbin/dnsmasq --strict-order --bind-interfaces --pid-file=/var/run/libvirt/network/default.pid --conf-file= --except-interface lo --listen-address 192.168.122.1 --dhcp-range 192.168.122.2,192.168.122.254 --dhcp-leasefile=/var/lib/libvirt/dnsmasq/default.leases --dhcp-lease-max=253 --dhcp-no-override

Generally it's bad form from a security perspective to run daemons as user nobody because a vulnerability in one daemon will possibly allow it, when compromised, to interfere with another daemon that is also running as nobody. The preferred solution is to run it as a service-specific system user. In this case, because there may be multiple dnsmasq daemons running, a separate libvirt-dnsmasq user (the dnsmasq package itself runs the dnsmasq daemon under a system user called unsurprisingly 'dnsmasq').

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: libvirt-bin 0.9.8-2ubuntu10
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-12.20-generic 3.2.2
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-12-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 1.92-0ubuntu1
Architecture: amd64
Date: Tue Feb 21 14:49:49 2012
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-Server 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" - Alpha amd64 (20100330)
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=screen
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=bash
SourcePackage: libvirt
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to precise on 2012-01-18 (34 days ago)