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Date:      Thu, 1 Jan 1998 12:03:14 -0800 (PST)
From:      Steve Reid <sreid@sea-to-sky.net>
To:        Michael Graffam <mgraffam@mhv.net>
Cc:        questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: HACKED (again)
Message-ID:  <Pine.LNX.3.95.980101114507.28747C-100000@alpha.sea-to-sky.net>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.96.980101000908.22306A-100000@localhost>

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On Thu, 1 Jan 1998 mgraffam@mhv.net wrote:
> Upload an evil library, and set the environment that telnetd sets up
> to call that lib rather than the ordinary stuffs, the evil lib gives 
> a root shell. Hmm.. this implies ELF, so I dont think FreeBSD would
> be vulnerable to this attack:

This did affect FreeBSD and most other Unixes. It was fixed a couple of
years ago, I think sometime between the 2.0.5 and 2.1.0 releases. I
wouldn't worry about it today. 

> Once root is attained, much cloaking can be done. One can modify the 'ps'
> program to hide processes, along with modified netcat programs, etc. There
> is a common package in the hacker world called the 'root kit' .. it is a
> collection of modified utils that do exactly that: hide your existance.

BSD-derived Unixes have features to prevent such cloaking, by preventing
everyone (even root) from changing important data. These features have
to be specifically enabled. In short: set the "immutable" flag on all
important binaries and scripts (see "man chflags") and run the system
with securelevel set non-zero. The immutable files then can't be
modified, and the immutable flag can't be removed except by taking the
system down to single-user mode.





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