Re: [linux-security] Re: Possible bufferoverflow condition in

[fox () mailhost rsn hp com (David DeSimone)]

Digital Dreamer <dreamer () garrison inetcan net> wrote:
>   On the same note, after all the problems with sendmail, why does it
> still need suid to operate?

Sendmail needs to be root in order to become another user, for example,
to run any pipe programs indicated in the .forward file.  It wouldn't do
to have those programs run as the user who was sending the mail.

Naturally, some other scheme could probably be concocted to avoid having
sendmail immediately be root, or to have some other daemon perform final
delivery if the uid needs to be changed, but that's going to probably be
a major design change.

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