-x implementations

John F Haugh II jfh at rpp386.cactus.org
Tue Mar 12 23:25:09 AEST 1991


In article <S3+9E31 at xds13.ferranti.com> peter at ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>Does "auth" have write access to these files? If so then you haven't changed
>the problem any. Just made it more obscure. Nothing that someone with adb
>and a little determination couldn't crack.

You have a pretty poor understanding of how systems with "enhanced
security" work.  More likely that not, "auth" is only able to write
the various files when some magical "trusted path" exists, or only
"trusted" applications can be executed by "auth" or some other
restriction.  You will likely find that "auth" lacks whatever magic
cookie it is that would let any random program modify any random
file.  If it doesn't we should all point our fingers at SecureWare
and laugh heartily.  [Then we can point our fingers at OSF for
picking SecureWare as well ;-) ]
-- 
John F. Haugh II        | Distribution to  | UUCP: ...!cs.utexas.edu!rpp386!jfh
Ma Bell: (512) 832-8832 | GEnie PROHIBITED :-) |  Domain: jfh at rpp386.cactus.org
"I've never written a device driver, but I have written a device driver manual"
                -- Robert Hartman, IDE Corp.



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