/bin/sh: the biggest Unix security loophole (1984) [pdf]

tuhs.org

23 points

vitplister

2 days ago


10 comments

supriyo-biswas 2 days ago

Loopholes of this kind exist these days as well.

When I was working for a major retailer, who, you'd assume would have thought about these things well enough, you were prevented from executing sudo, except for being able to use it for text editing (sudo vi). I needed to install some packages with a root shell at the time, so I used the command execution feature within vi to get that.

  • netsharc 2 days ago

    In the Middle Ages, when Internet access wasn't in your pocket all the time, I was in a hostel which had Internet kiosks, you'd put a coin in a machine, and the PC would start 2 browser windows: 1 with just a countdown, and one for you to browse. You'd have to put more coins or when the time ends the browser would be killed.

    Of course there was nothing else in the UI except this window and the browser, but on ancient Firefox, in the print window you had the option to specify the command line to print. I tried "xterm", hit "Print", and voila, a prompt!

    Using ps, I managed to figure out the difference between the unpaid browser and the paid one, and next time around I could launch a browsing session without payment...

  • tiberious726 2 days ago

    My favorite is pressing '!' while inside a sudoed or setuid less.

  • akimbostrawman a day ago

    I would assume sudoedit could have preventing that

  • raffraffraff 2 days ago

    Not too mention that you can edit anything you want, like the sudoers file.

  • more_corn 2 days ago

    I once encountered a good anti sudo control. Execute sudo and you get a warning “log in as root instead!” Firstly, no Secondly did you just “prevent” sudo by aliasing it?

zahlman 2 days ago

Interesting piece of history. The actual exploit techniques have a real flavour of SQL injection about them.

pengaru 2 days ago

Wow, they even used the accurate term "crackers", I feel so old.

chrisding 2 days ago

Interesting piece of history.