From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Jul 7 09:12:05 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CC9BD37B401 for ; Mon, 7 Jul 2003 09:12:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mta11.adelphia.net (mta11.adelphia.net [64.8.50.205]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7B0A343FBD for ; Mon, 7 Jul 2003 09:12:04 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from wmoran@potentialtech.com) Received: from potentialtech.com ([24.53.179.151]) by mta11.adelphia.net (InterMail vM.5.01.05.32 201-253-122-126-132-20030307) with ESMTP id <20030707161203.HTLU1549.mta11.adelphia.net@potentialtech.com>; Mon, 7 Jul 2003 12:12:03 -0400 Message-ID: <3F099BD3.8030403@potentialtech.com> Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2003 12:12:03 -0400 From: Bill Moran User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.3) Gecko/20030429 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: quadrant References: <200307071159.51505.quadrant@apex.homedns.org> In-Reply-To: <200307071159.51505.quadrant@apex.homedns.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: /var/mail question X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2003 16:12:06 -0000 quadrant wrote: > I was temporarilly using pine to retrieve my email, and upon exiting the > program, pine notified me that the /var/mail directory was > vulnerable, and advised a chmod 1777 of such. The default is 775. > What are the implications of this, and won't 1777 make the folder more > vulnerable? My understanding was that if the SUID bit is turned > on for either U, G or O, that security is more at risk. Please > let me know what I should do... Read the man page for chmod. The suid and sgid bits mean something different on directories than on files. When set, they force all files created in that directory to be owned by the owner of the directory. Again ... see the man page for more detail, as well as (I believe) a description of how this helps security. -- Bill Moran Potential Technologies http://www.potentialtech.com