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Article #969

Re: Unix Viruses. Are there any??

#969
From: Paul C Leyland
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 11:28
37 lines
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In article <senetza.727648754@honte> senetza@sigma.uleth.ca (Len Senetza) writes:

Description of perverted ls(1) deleted.

   so, if root executes your ls, then x is attached to some program in the
   system.  have your x only do it to programs which are suid.  then it's
   all over the place; memory protection and file access controls fail
   here.

   this assumes that root has . in its path, and how many root accounts
   out there do?


Mine don't.  Long time ago, in a previous life, the site I was
sysadmin for got bitten by this very trojan (except someone
implemented it as a shell-script rather than a binary).  It was done
for a "joke".  At the time, I was 1200 miles away on vacation.  When I
got back, the joker had several interesting interviews with me, his
supervisor and the head of the faculty.

Several consequences:
	1)  Root never has . in its path
	2)  The joker stopped playing dangerous games, and went on to be
	    a good system hacker.
	3)  Demonstrated that my insistence on good backups wasn't purely
	    obsessional, but was actually vital to a research group.
	4)  The victim superuser, learned to type \/bin/su - root
            to avoid some of the more obvious su trojans.


Paul
--
Paul Leyland <pcl@oxford.ac.uk>          | Hanging on in quiet desperation is
Oxford University Computing Service      |     the English way.
13 Banbury Road, Oxford, OX2 6NN, UK     | The time is come, the song is over.
Tel: +44-865-273200  Fax: +44-865-273275 | Thought I'd something more to say.
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Message-ID: <PCL.93Jan25112838@rhodium.ox.ac.uk>
Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!pipex!warwick!uknet!comlab.ox.ac.uk!pcl
References: <1993Jan15.090426.12195@unix.brighton.ac.uk> <17988@umd5.umd.edu> <senetza.727648754@honte>

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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!pipex!warwick!uknet!comlab.ox.ac.uk!pcl
From: pcl@ox.ac.uk (Paul C Leyland)
Newsgroups: comp.security.misc
Subject: Re: Unix Viruses. Are there any??
Message-ID: <PCL.93Jan25112838@rhodium.ox.ac.uk>
Date: 25 Jan 93 11:28:38 GMT
References: <1993Jan15.090426.12195@unix.brighton.ac.uk> <17988@umd5.umd.edu>
 <senetza.727648754@honte>
Organization: Oxford University Computing Services, 13 Banbury Rd Oxford OX2
 6NN
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In-reply-to: senetza@sigma.uleth.ca's message of 21 Jan 93 20:39:14 GMT