[TUHS] The evolution of Unix facilities and architecture

[jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)]

    > From: Dave Horsfall

    > Err, isn't that the sticky bit, not the setuid bit?

Oh, right you are. I just looked in the code for ptrace(), and assumed that
was it.

The fix is _actually_ in sys1$exec() (in V6) and sys1$getxfile() (in PWB1 and
the MIT system:

	/*
	 * set SUID/SGID protections, if no tracing
	 */

	if ((u.u_procp->p_flag&STRC)==0) {
                if(ip->i_mode&ISUID)
			if(u.u_uid != 0) {
				u.u_uid = ip->i_uid;
				u.u_procp->p_uid = ip->i_uid;
				}

The thing is, this code is identical in V6, PWB1, and MIT system!?

So now I'm wondering - was this really the bug? Or was there some
bug in ptrace I don't see, which was the actual bug that's being
discussed here.

Because is sure looks like this would prevent the exploitation that I
described (start an SUID program under the debugger, then patch the code).

Or perhaps somehow this fix was broken by some other feature,, and that
introduced the exploit?

	  Noel