full-disclosure - Partial Solution to SUID Problems

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Message-ID: <20031207015653.N66813@dekadens.coredump.cx>
From: lcamtuf at coredump.cx (Michal Zalewski)
Subject: Partial Solution to SUID Problems 

On Sat, 6 Dec 2003 Valdis.Kletnieks@...edu wrote:

> Sometimes, old and silly rules aren't just about security. The *real*
> reason for the "always su from a user account" rule isn't to stop
> exploits.  It's so you have an audit trail of who did what.

> Quite often in a large shop, you'll have 5 or 6 people who have
> legitimate root access to a box /.../

The way I handle this is creating several :0:0: accounts with separate
passwords. After login, they will all see themselves as the first user
with :0:0 in /etc/passwd, but utmp/wtmp/lastlog entries and syslog
messages would refer to the original login account.

But as I said, su is valid in some configurations... yet, the rule I am
referring to is often perceived as a security feature - that by having
another setuid program you may prevent others from sniffing your root
password... and this is sort of bogus.

-- 
------------------------- bash$ :(){ :|:&};: --
 Michal Zalewski * [http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx]
    Did you know that clones never use mirrors?
--------------------------- 2003-12-07 01:56 --

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