Information about Ubuntu system automatically written to iPod

[Olathe]

On Xubuntu 16.04, I connected an iPod Nano 5th Generation (8 GB) to my computer. After working on the files on the iPod from within the terminal for a while, I found that the almost 21 MB file /media/username/DEVICENAME/iPod_Control/iTunes/iTunesControl contained sensitive information about my Ubuntu system, such as my username, commands that I had run recently, commands that I had run a long time ago, the full paths of some of those commands, environment variables, my UID, and text that appeared in my terminal window (such as the prompt, which included a path that I was on; it even included ANSI escape sequences for the prompt).

I've attached the output of `strings iTunesControl`, with my username, hostname, and the iPod device name changed.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 16.04
Package: mount 2.27.1-6ubuntu3
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.4.0-22.40-generic 4.4.8
Uname: Linux 4.4.0-22-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.1-0ubuntu2
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: XFCE
Date: Wed May 18 20:12:03 2016
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-04-04 (1140 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Lubuntu 12.10 "Quantal Quetzal" - Release amd64 (20121017.1)
SourcePackage: util-linux
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to xenial on 2016-03-25 (54 days ago)

[Seth Arnold (seth-arnold)]

Do you happen to know off-hand which program is responsible for the iPod_Control/iTunes/iTunesControl file?

Also, note that your logs indicate a great deal of kernel audit messages, perhaps there's something worth investigating in /var/log/audit/audit.log.

Thanks

[Olathe (erlercw+launchpad)]

If I understand the question correctly, there shouldn't be any programs responsible for it other than something like a driver for accessing Apple devices. I didn't start up any programs that deal specifically with Apple devices or music devices or any music playing programs.

Thunar (the Xubuntu file manager) opened a window when the iPod was automounted. I was dealing with files in the terminal using standard commands like ls and rm. I also used Ruby's irb and the Ruby fileutils package to move and delete files. I used id3ren to rename some MP3 files. I also used strings to try to locate some missing song titles.

Unfortunately, I get "cat: /var/log/audit/audit.log: No such file or directory".

[Marc Deslauriers (mdeslaur)]

Would you mind if we made this bug public? Perhaps someone has seen this issue before.

[Olathe (erlercw+launchpad)]

I'm OK with making the bug public.

[Alberto Salvia Novella (es20490446e)]

@ Mark Deslauriers

This bug needed to be nominated for a stable release upgrade before marking it as triaged.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

I cannot find iPod_Control or iTunesControl in libimobiledevice or gvfs, so I'm not sure what component actually creates those. But it's certainly not util-linux, so removing package name for now.