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Bugtraq archives for 2nd quarter (Apr-Jun) 1994: Re: /dev/{km,m}em worries

Re: /dev/{km,m}em worries

H Morrow Long (long-morrowcs.yale.edu)
Tue, 17 May 1994 11:13:39 -0400 

Rick Tait <ricktgnu.ai.mit.edu> wrote:
>What exactly are the problems with having /dev/mem and /dev/kmem readable
>by other? Is there any way in which our systems can be exploited by 
>this? I recently noticed that one of our (two) servers had a
>different perm on the abovementioned files. Cf:

You (or someone else more malevolent) could read the address space of
processes looking for passwords stored in memory or other interesting
information (ie. a fishing expedition).

A more focused effort would be one of the legendary "clist peekers"
(programs to target for reading the data structures used by the Unix
terminal interfaces - ttys - called 'clists') so that the characters
being typed by users could be read as they were being entered.  Fun!

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H. Morrow Long, Mgr of Dev., Yale Univ., Comp Sci Dept, 011 AKW, New Haven, CT
06520-8285,	VOICE:	(203)-432-{1248,1254}		FAX:	(203)-432-0593