Re: UNIX Tar Security Advisory from TEAM PWN4GE

[Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu]

On Wed, 02 Feb 2005 23:18:12 +0100, Volker Tanger said:

> Alternatively the TAR binary might be SUID'ed, which is A Bad Idea(TM),
> too - which are all SUID'ed programs that can write to arbitrary
> locations...

And in the prehistoric dawn of the computer era, about 15 years ago, IBM made
one of the first RISC-based systems, the RT.  One of the operating systems
available for it was AIX 2.2 (a SYSV port, which came out before AIX 1.2 for
the x86 family of PS/2 boxes), which indeed shipped with a setuid /bin/tar.

First time I saw that, I said to myself "Damn, I've been hax0red".  Then I
re-installed tar from the original system media - and promptly wished it had
in fact been a trojaned binary.

Attachment: _bin
Description:

_______________________________________________
Full-Disclosure - We believe in it.
Charter: http://lists.netsys.com/full-disclosure-charter.html