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From: "Ron Natalie" <ron@ronnatalie.com>
To: "The Eunuchs Hysterical Society" <tuhs@tuhs.org>
Subject: [TUHS] Re: shell escapes in utilities
Date: Tue, 01 Aug 2023 18:43:07 +0000	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <ema20a2ab4-d44e-4b1c-8e7e-079960bdd910@a70c2ae8.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAP6exYLpMdPHvj0VuY+qm_S3x9fY0hhf3SantTf-+QHCRZCA-w@mail.gmail.com>


The Sendmail WIZ bug was but one of the security disasters from shell 
escapes.    I remember IBM sending me an early RS/6000.    Booted the 
thing up but had no clue what root or any other password was.
So, I set to work hacking on it.   Now this thing had a physical key on 
the front.   Off, On, and a Wrench symbol.   OK, let’s try the wrench.   
  Boots up some sort of maintenance program.   After playing around with 
it a bit I find a help option.    This starts up a paginator (more or pg 
or something).    Sure enough you can shell escape otu of that.   
Instant root shell.    Now it’s trivial to change the root password and 
reboot in normal mode.

Yep, the need for shell escapes largely went away with windowing and job 
control.


  reply	other threads:[~2023-08-01 18:43 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 25+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2023-08-01  5:47 [TUHS] " ron minnich
2023-08-01 11:38 ` [TUHS] " Leah Neukirchen
2023-08-01 12:31   ` G. Branden Robinson
2023-08-01 20:33   ` Dave Horsfall
2023-08-01 20:40     ` arnold
2023-08-01 14:29 ` Skip Tavakkolian
2023-08-01 15:30   ` ron minnich
2023-08-01 18:43     ` Ron Natalie [this message]
2023-08-01 18:55       ` Niklas Karlsson
2023-08-01 20:48         ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2023-08-01 21:11           ` Ron Natalie
2023-08-01 21:52             ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2023-08-01 21:13           ` Niklas Karlsson
2023-08-01 21:19         ` Dave Horsfall
2023-08-02  3:01         ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
2023-08-02  3:42           ` Niklas Karlsson
2023-08-02  2:59       ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
2023-08-02 10:49         ` Rich Salz
2023-08-02 14:49           ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
2023-08-02 14:20         ` Clem Cole
2023-09-19 16:56     ` Ori Bernstein
2023-09-19 17:04       ` ron minnich
2023-08-01 15:36 ` Phil Budne
2023-08-01 15:37 ` Clem Cole
2023-08-01 15:37 ` Grant Taylor via TUHS

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