Re: Security hole?

From: Geoffrey S. Mendelson (gsm_at_nonexisting.hamakor.org.il)
Date: Thu 19 Jan 2006 - 16:33:35 IST


On Thu, Jan 19, 2006 at 05:11:33PM +0200, Efraim Yawitz wrote:

> The system call mknod can only be used by root to make special
> device files, but once those files exist they can be copied by
> anyone. What is to stop me from becoming root on my own machine and
> creating a whole set of /dev files which are world-readable and
> writable, putting them in a tar archive and then untarring that on
> another machine where I would now have raw access to all the
> devices. It seems like the only safeguard against such a thing
> would be to prevent users from bringing any files into the system,
> but this is ridiculous if Internet access is to be allowed.
>
> Any reactions? Am I making some obvious mistake?

        (as me, not root) tar cvf - -C /dev fd0 |tar xvf -
                fd0
                fd0
                tar: fd0: Cannot mknod: Operation not permitted
                tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

Seems like you are ok.

Geoff.

-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm_at_mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM
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