Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!unix.cis.pitt.edu!dsinc!netnews.upenn.edu!msuinfo!rang From: rang@cs.wisc.edu (Anton Rang) Newsgroups: comp.unix.internals Subject: NFS & security (was Re: Complex security mechanism is unsecure) Summary: Don't go together Message-ID: Date: 16 Dec 90 18:11:37 GMT References: <1990Dec7.171501.18028@mp.cs.niu.edu> <4627@pkmab.se> <4088@osc.COM> Sender: news@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu Organization: UW-Madison CS department Lines: 14 In-Reply-To: strick@osc.com's message of 15 Dec 90 02:15:54 GMT In article <4088@osc.COM> strick@osc.com (henry strickland) writes: >In the normal NFS setup, making myself root on a workstation does not >give me root priveleges on the filesystem of a remote NFS server >which I can mount the partitions of. [ ... ] Now if any of these >non-root users owns (or groups has w bits on) some file in the PATH >of root (or one of the directories or superdirectories in the PATH), >the trojan horse can ride. Does Sun still install their OS distributions with directories owned by bin? This one bit me once, before I realized how easy it was to spoof the YP "authentication" (netgroups stuff) which was being used to "restrict" (ha!) people from mounting our servers.... Sigh. Anton +---------------------------+------------------+-------------+ | Anton Rang (grad student) | rang@cs.wisc.edu | UW--Madison | +---------------------------+------------------+-------------+