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Vuln-Dev Archives: Unix * weirdness

Unix * weirdness

Subject: Unix * weirdness
From: Blue Boar (BlueBoarTHIEVCO.COM)
Date: Sat Jan 01 2000 - 16:04:37 CST

This is one of those funny thing I notice when doing my regular job.

I had to clean out the following directory: (It's from a firewall-1
install, if you're curious)

ls -al
total 62
-rw-r--r-- 1 root other 24 Apr 16 1999 -proc
drwxr-xr-x 11 root root 512 Dec 30 18:13 .
drwxr-xr-x 23 root root 512 Dec 30 17:25 ..
drwx------ 2 root bin 1024 Aug 5 20:32 bin
drwx------ 2 root bin 512 Jan 13 1999 cisco
drwx------ 2 root bin 512 Jan 13 1999 doc
drwx------ 3 root bin 1024 Apr 16 1999 lib
drwx------ 2 root other 13312 Dec 22 00:01 log
drwx------ 2 root root 8192 Jan 13 1999 lost+found
drwx------ 5 root bin 512 Jan 13 1999 man
drwx------ 2 root bin 512 Apr 16 1999 modules
drwx------ 2 root bin 1024 Jan 13 1999 scripts

# rm -R *
rm: illegal option -- p
rm: illegal option -- o
rm: illegal option -- c
usage: rm [-fiRr] file ...

It took me a minute. It's taking the file named -proc and parsing as
if it was a set of command line options. I guess this makes some
sense.. I believe the shell just takes all the files and makes them all
command-line parameters when you use *.

Naturally, I've been thinking about the possibilities... I haven't
had much time to work out details (got sucked into Y2K weekend
work) so I wanted to pass this to the list for further explanation.

BTW, I got rid of it with:

# unlink -proc

So, I wonder what other kinds of traps can be laid for the root
user or cron jobs, etc... For example, here's a line from my
S05RMTMPFILES in /etc/rc2.d dir, on a Solaris 2.6 machine.
(Which is where this behavior was noticed):

/usr/bin/rm -rf /tmp/*

So, if I can place an interestingly names file in /tmp
(and anyone can) can I get interesting things to happen
when the machine reboots.

For example, can I get a file with spaces in it? How about
the | (vertical bar) character? How about a ; ?

(Yes, I could test it myself if I had time at the moment.)

Is this a really old "feature" that everyone knows about except me?

                                                BB

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