From: "Theodore Y. Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>
To: Alan Glasser <alanglasser@gmail.com>
Cc: TUHS main list <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] Two anecdotes
Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2021 21:48:42 -0500 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <YZhiCpytvCeUX+/2@mit.edu> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <EC840092-F195-4C3D-886B-1370D80BAFC5@gmail.com>
On Fri, Nov 19, 2021 at 09:08:49PM -0500, Alan Glasser wrote:
> Most of the hundreds (thousands?) of Unix systems running in Bell
> Labs seemed to have well guarded root passwords. There was always
> social engineering, like Rob mentioned. And, of course, setuid root
> exploits that I enjoyed.
Does anyone remember the security vulnerability existed where
/bin/mail was setuid root, and you could issue the command "!/bin/ed
/etc/passwd" and the editor would be executed as root because
/bin/mail failed to drop the setuid root privs before executing the
shell escape?
When I was a Freshman at MIT I implementing some image processing
programming on an old Unix system for a Materials Science professor in
1987 as part of MIT's Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program
(UROP). It was some ancient Unix program, and to my amazement, the
/bin/mail security vulnerability was there even though it was a famous
security oopise that should have been patched long before. I *think*
the system was some kind of AT&T Unix (not BSD) system, but I can't
remember the hardware or the specific Unix that was on the system.
Does anyone know how long and on which Unix variants this particular
/bin/mail setuid root vulnerability was around?
- Ted
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2021-11-20 2:56 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 8+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2021-11-19 22:41 Alan Glasser
2021-11-20 0:54 ` Rob Pike
2021-11-20 1:30 ` Jon Steinhart
2021-11-20 2:08 ` Alan Glasser
2021-11-20 2:48 ` Theodore Y. Ts'o [this message]
2021-11-20 3:08 ` John Cowan
2021-11-20 10:12 ` Ralph Corderoy
2021-11-21 2:05 ` Larry McVoy
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