why suid mount (was Re: Possible bufferoverflow condition in lpr,

[reece () taz nceye net (Bryan Reece)]

   Date:        Tue, 13 Aug 1996 09:25:03 -0400
   From: Mike Acar <mike () contract kent edu>

   Speaking of suid binaries, *why* are /bin/mount and /bin/umount suid?
   These shouldn't be run by anybody but the superuser.

They're suid root to allow users to mount/umount removable media.
There's a `user' option in fstab that allows normal users to
mount/umount the specified filesystem; this is normally used along
with nosuid,nodev in an attempt to reduce security risks.

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