Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!oucsace!pmech
From: pmech@oucsace.cs.OHIOU.EDU (Paul J. Mech)
Newsgroups: news.sysadmin
Subject: Re: Security checkup
Summary: Specific place to look
Message-ID: <303@oucsace.cs.OHIOU.EDU>
Date: 4 Oct 88 04:39:20 GMT
References: <167@carpet.WLK.COM> <5014@medusa.cs.purdue.edu>
Distribution: na
Organization: Ohio University CS Dept., Athens
Lines: 13

In article <5014@medusa.cs.purdue.edu>, spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford) writes:
> 
> 2) Allow NO accounts without passwords, including uucp.
> 

One place to watch out for is that many systems come with a hardware-vendor
maintainence uid, often with root permissions. I have broken into (in each
case at the request of the system's owner) three separate systems (a VAX,
a Tower, and an Isotron/OSI) with this approach, and if not granted root
privileges immediately, gained root access within 5 min. This is a massive
hole that frequently has not been clearly documented.

Paul J. Mech