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Re: vixie cron possible local root compromise


From: Andrew Brown <atatat () ATATDOT NET>
Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2001 23:18:04 -0500

When crontab has determined the name of the user calling crontab (using
getpwuid()),
the login name is stored in a 20 byte buffer using the strcpy() function
(which does no bounds checking). 'useradd' (the utility used to add users
to the system)
however allows usernames of over 20 characters (32 at most on my distribution).

i can see how this is an "issue", but don't you already have to be
root to get a user name longer than 20 characters?  or are you just
assuming that some admins out there will fail to balk at such a
strange request?

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