Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 14:41:27 +1030 (CST) From: newton@communica.com.au (Mark Newton) To: bmc@telebase.com (Brian Clapper) Cc: nlawson@kdat.csc.calpoly.edu, msmith@comtch.iea.com, security@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Suspicious symlinks in /tmp Message-ID: <9602270411.AA25647@communica.com.au> In-Reply-To: <199602262337.SAA00872@telebase.com.> from "Brian Clapper" at Feb 26, 96 06:37:15 pm
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Brian Clapper wrote:
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 1176 Feb 16 09:59 /etc/passwd
> lrwxr-xr-x 1 bmc wheel 11 Feb 26 18:31 passwd -> /etc/passwd
>
> As it turns out, the symlink ends up being owned by whoever owns its parent
> directory--regardless of the UID of the process that created the symlink
> and regardless of the UID that owns the file to which it points.
[ ... ]
> Also highly counterintuitive behavior, at least to me.
... also totally irrelevent: The permissions on the symlink don't
arbitrate file access permissions -- The permissions on the file it's
pointing to (ie: the destination) are used for that purpose.
So: Not only does it not matter who owns the symlink, it also doesn't
matter how it is chmod'ed. You can set its permissions to rwxrwxrwx
without making a spot of difference to the accessibility of the file
it's pointing at.
- mark
---
Mark Newton Email: newton@communica.com.au
Systems Engineer Phone: +61-8-373-2523
Communica Systems WWW: http://www.communica.com.au
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