🚀 go-pugleaf

Submitted-by: toon@moene.indiv.nluug.nl (Toon Moene)

In article <15ibqsINNc3a@ftp.UU.NET> I wrote:
> Recently, I had a short discussion with the support staff of ECMWF's 
> Cray Y-MP/8 about the use of chown and chmod u+s on the (new) UNICOS 
> 7.0. An excerpt follows:
        Signs of declining control of English here ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

[ ... Discussion about security aspects of chown and setuid deleted ...]

Thanks to all those kind enough to mail me why chown isn't a good idea in  
ordinary user's hands (I have been too long out of the business of system  
administrating OS's, clearly - got to get mean again :-)

The manual page on my NeXT says it quite succinctly:

     Only the super-user can change owner, in order to simplify
     accounting procedures.

where 'accounting' has to be understood in broad terms ...
Now given that non-root users can't chown, why is letting them chmod u+s  
their own executables a bad idea (Except to protect them against  
themselves :-))

--
Toon Moene (toon@moene.indiv.nluug.nl)
Kantershof 269, 1104 GN  Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Tel.: + 31 20 6982029; Fax: + 31 20 6003411
No Disclaimers; a NeXT at home protects against this occupational hazard.


Volume-Number: Volume 28, Number 76