Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!hp4nl!ruuinf!cs.ruu.nl
From: piet@cs.ruu.nl (Piet van Oostrum)
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: Re: Gnu Emacs security hole?
Message-ID: <2520@ruuinf.cs.ruu.nl>
Date: 23 Feb 90 16:33:54 GMT
References: <10022@leadsv.UUCP>
Sender: news@ruuinf.cs.ruu.nl
Reply-To: piet@cs.ruu.nl (Piet van Oostrum)
Organization: Dept of Computer Science, Utrecht University, The Netherlands
Lines: 15
In-reply-to: tn@leadsv.UUCP (Tristan Nefzger)

In article <10022@leadsv.UUCP>, tn@leadsv (Tristan Nefzger) writes:
 `Some time ago a review of Clifford Stoll's book appeared in EE Times
 `(11/6/89).  Mentioned was a bug in Gnu Emacs which "allows a file to
 `be moved into the protected systems space."  Do you know of any
 `security holes in Gnu Emacs and what versions they are in?
 `
The bug was not in emacs itself but in the movemail program. On many sites
this is installed setuid root, because it needs write access to the mail
directory. It used to copy the mail file without checking if the user had
access to the output file. This has been fixed in release 18.53.
-- 
Piet* van Oostrum, Dept of Computer Science, Utrecht University,
Padualaan 14, P.O. Box 80.089, 3508 TB Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Telephone: +31-30-531806   Uucp:   uunet!mcsun!hp4nl!ruuinf!piet
Telefax:   +31-30-513791   Internet:  piet@cs.ruu.nl   (*`Pete')