Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!mcvax!unido!pbinfo!corona!michael
From: michael@pbinfo.UUCP (Michael Schmidt)
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: Re: Is GNU Cause of Security Problems???
Message-ID: <227@corona.pb>
Date: 4 May 88 07:35:44 GMT
References: <5290@aw.sei.cmu.edu> <4983@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <193@ists>
Organization: Uni-GH Paderborn, FB17/Informatik
Lines: 25

Neulich schrieb mike@ists (Mike Clarkson):
  Nothing in gnu Emacs is suid root (or anything else), ...

If you want to have Emacs run with a reniced priority, it can do
it for you and set its own priority to whatsoever you told the
config.h. BUT, it can do it only, if it is running suid root (of
course). Normally, if you have defined HIGHPRI in your config.h,
Emacs does an 

#ifdef HIGHPRI
  setpriority (PRIO_PROCESS, getpid (), HIGHPRI);
  setuid (getuid ());
#endif HIGHPRI

in emacs.c. Then, if you forget, that you decided NOT to define
HIGHPRI and install it with suid root, you will have trouble.

So, as I mentioned earlier, you have to be carefull (as allways).

    Michael Schmidt

-- 
    Michael Schmidt, Universitaet-GH Paderborn, FB 17, Warburger Str.100,
                     D-4790 Paderborn, West Germany
Mail:   michael@pbinfo.UUCP         or          michael%pbinfo@uunet.uu.net