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Re: About the 'su' command


>> Why rewrite 'su' to do those types of tricks, when 'ssh' already exists?

Uhhh - how about "script portability??"

(Which is why I predict su will "someday" be made to do this. When??
Simple,
 When somebody does it .... ) [ I ain't demand'in nothin from nobody ]

Brian Kelly







"Karsten M. Self" <kmself@ix.netcom.com>@cygwin.com on 06/29/2003 07:34:57
PM

Sent by:    cygwin-owner@cygwin.com


To:    cygwin@cygwin.com
cc:     (bcc: Brian Kelly/WTC1/Empire)

Subject:    Re: About the 'su' command


Is this, or could this be made, part of the standard Cygwin docs and/or
FAQ?

Very nice explanation, Bill.

Peace.

on Wed, Jun 18, 2003 at 08:51:24AM -0400, Bill C. Riemers
(cygwin@docbill.net) wrote:
>
> > The second says the command wont work unless I have appropriate
> > privileges.
> > Do you know "someone" on an XP station that has more powers than the
> > Administrator or an Administrators member ?
>
> On most Unix systems, if you create a user with UID 65535 you will find
that
> user is unable to run 'suid' commands including 'su'.  This is result of
> 65535 mapping to -1 as a short, and -1 having special meaning.  For
awhile
> there was a trend to make the "nobody" user 65535.  But then with the
dawn
> of the web, programmers started wanting to make SUID cgi-bin scripts,
while
> still using "nobody" as the default user for web connections.  As such,
the
> practice using 65535 for "nobody" has for the most part been abandoned in
> the Unix world.
>
> However, someone at Microsoft must have thought this was an extremely
good
> idea.  And why just have one account which is not allowed to SUID?  So
> instead, Microsoft wrote XP so any account != UID 18 is prohibited from
> SUID.  (OK.  I over simplified, you can actually grant other accounts
> privilege to SUID on XP professional...)
>
> At first thought, the idea of restricting SUID to SYSTEM seems to give XP
> much stronger security than most unix systems.  Until, you stop and
> consider, if only SYSTEM can SUID, and I can't login as SYSTEM, how does
> anything ever get installed to run under SYSTEM?  It turns out SYSTEM is
the
> account used for running services.  Anyone with Administrators privilege
can
> add a new service.  Consequently, all Administrators can run any program
> they like as SYSTEM, including of course 'su'.
>
> So, you ask, if it is so easy for Administrator to run a process as
SYSTEM,
> why doesn't 'su' use this trick?  Quite simple.  You can not change an
> existing process to SYSTEM privileges, nor can you do a direct exec() so
you
> can pass your open file descriptors and environment to the new process.
> Consequently, you would find that if su used this "trick" your process
would
> be running under a new TTY without access to existing file descriptors.
So
> a command like, 'su root -c "bar.sh" < /tmp/foo' would not work as
expected.
>
> Now you ask, "Well then, why can ssh do pipes."  Very simple, 'ssh'
sticks
> around after starting the child process starts passing data from open
file
> descriptors though sockets.
>
> Finally you ask, "If ssh can do that, why doesn't su?"  Simple.  Why
rewrite
> 'su' to do those types of tricks, when 'ssh' already exists?
>
>                                              Bill


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--
Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com>
http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
 What Part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
   Spread the real scoop on Xenu and The Church of Scientology, link
       <a href="http://xenu.org/";;>Scientology</a> on your website.



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