RE: allowing ordinary users to open privileged ports

You know, I've often heard this statement (about SUID shell scripts being dangerous) without a good explanation -- too often the authoring citing "security concerns" for not explaining it (not that Brian did!)

For those who feel the same way, I found a reasonable explanation here:

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/unix-faq/faq/part4/section-7.html

It does a good job of covering PATH issues, timing issues and others.  Always good to understand exactly what type of attack one is defending against.

Cheers,
 - Mike Myers, Mike.Myers <at> nwdc.net


-----Original Message-----
From: Brian Parent [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, September 13, 2004 10:29 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: allowing ordinary users to open privileged ports


I'm glad to hear that your method #2 presented other problems
which prevented you from using it.

Creating a setuid shell script creates a major security hole.
Local users with access to such a script can execute arbitrary
programs as the owner of the script (root in this case).