From owner-freebsd-security Mon Sep 9 11:26:28 1996 Return-Path: owner-security Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id LAA09735 for security-outgoing; Mon, 9 Sep 1996 11:26:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: from eel.dataplex.net (eel.dataplex.net [208.2.87.2]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id LAA09729 for ; Mon, 9 Sep 1996 11:26:24 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [208.2.87.4] (cod [208.2.87.4]) by eel.dataplex.net (8.6.11/8.6.9) with SMTP id NAA21972 for ; Mon, 9 Sep 1996 13:26:22 -0500 X-Sender: rkw@shark.dataplex.net Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Mon, 9 Sep 1996 13:26:21 -0500 To: security@freebsd.org From: rkw@dataplex.net (Richard Wackerbarth) Subject: Question about chroot Sender: owner-security@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk In looking at some of the "make" problems, I ran up against a characteristic of "chroot" that puzzles me. In order to chroot, you must be root. Why? It appears to me than the only thing that chroot does is to restrict the "visable" tree. It does not ADD anything that is not already there. If that is the case, why wouldn't it be good enough for chroot to be suid root and allow any user to execute it? Am I overlooking some security hole?