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Date:      Thu, 31 Jul 1997 12:24:06 -0600 (MDT)
From:      Marc Slemko <marcs@znep.com>
To:        security@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: security hole in FreeBSD
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.3.95.970731122040.27274G-100000@alive.znep.com>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.95q.970728154922.12468A-100000@netrail.net>

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(no, it isn't particularily FreeBSD related but at least it is
security...)

On Mon, 28 Jul 1997, Jonathan A. Zdziarski wrote:

> There IS one common hole I've seen apache and stronghold have, and that is

More accurately, there is a common hole you have seen people have with
their installations.

> that some people like to leave their sessiond or httpd files owned by
> 'nobody'.  This allows somebody running CGI on that system to replace
> those binaries with their own, hacked binaries (since the scripts are
> usually owned as nobody), and the next time httpd starts, they can make it
> write a root shell, or just about anything along those lines.

Presuming you start the server as root and have it run as a different
user, one other thing to note is to be sure that the directory your log
files are in is not writable by anyone you don't trust with root.  If
someone can write to the directory with the logfile in (or any directory
above it), they can almost certainly get root. 

The log files themself can be writable by whoever you want (although there
is no reason for them to be, and it can let people tamper with them); the
directory is the thing that is important.




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