Bugtraq mailing list archives

Re: xterm log file vulnerability


From: kris () HUB FREEBSD ORG (Kris Kennaway)
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 01:37:18 -0800


On Tue, 29 Feb 2000, Morten Welinder wrote:

Problem: when log files are enabled, they are created in the
following way (checking in XFree86 3.3.6 source; matches Solaris
binaries) and are subject to race conditions:

XFree86 3.3.6 doesn't seem to be vulnerable by default - from
xc/programs/xterm/misc.c:

#ifdef ALLOWLOGGING

/*
 * Logging is a security hole, since it allows a setuid program to write
 * arbitrary data to an arbitrary file.  So it is disabled by default.
 */

Certainly I couldn't get xterm -l -lf foo to work for me at all.

Kris

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