Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!ames!lll-winken!lll-lcc!pyramid!csg
From: csg@pyramid.pyramid.com (Carl S. Gutekunst)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.pyramid
Subject: Re: Should kmem be read to the world?
Message-ID: <75185@pyramid.pyramid.com>
Date: 27 Jun 89 05:44:35 GMT
References: <856@rex.cs.tulane.edu>
Reply-To: csg@pyramid.pyramid.com (Carl S. Gutekunst)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Pyramid Technology Corp., Mountain View, CA
Lines: 20

In article <856@rex.cs.tulane.edu> mb@rex.cs.tulane.edu (Mark Benard) writes:
>We just noticed that w does not work.  It returns the message "no kmem".
>Should /dev/kmem be made readable to the world or will that cause
>security problems?

Making /dev/kmem world readable is *definitely* a security problem. It looks
like someone has been careless when doing file copies or updates. As shipped,
the permissions on /dev/kmem are:

	cr--r-----  1 root     sys        3,   1 May  4  1988 /dev/kmem

and the permissions on the kmem-reader utilities are:

	-rwxr-sr-x  1 bin      sys         61440 Apr 29  1988 /bin/ps
	-rwxr-sr-x  1 bin      sys         45056 Apr 14  1988 /etc/pstat
	-rwxr-sr-x  1 bin      sys         32768 Apr 13  1988 /usr/ucb/vmstat

etc.

<csg>