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Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!decuac!avolio
From: avolio@decuac.DEC.COM (Frederick M. Avolio)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: setuid shell scripts
Message-ID: <1112@decuac.DEC.COM>
Date: Fri, 28-Nov-86 11:36:50 EST
Article-I.D.: decuac.1112
Posted: Fri Nov 28 11:36:50 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 28-Nov-86 20:28:13 EST
References: <13@houligan.UUCP>
Organization: ULTRIX Applications Center, MD
Lines: 18

In article <13@houligan.UUCP>, dave@murphy.UUCP (Rael's brother John) writes:
> It works on BSD4.2 and 4.3 systems.  ...
> Use of this feature poses a number of security problems, since shell scripts
> aren't usually written with security in mind.  ...

Regarding security problems...  You may as well just write a one line
C program that exec's the shell and make *that* setuid to root because
having a setuid shell script causes *the exact same behavior*.  In
other words, a shell script that looks like:

	#! /bin/sh
	date
	exit 0

and has the setuid bit set and is owned by root and readable by anyone
is like having no password on the root account.

Fred