Thank you Yaron and Josh!!

When I saw your emails, I had that kind an Ah moment!!

I know its a big security problem...... I was just wanted to
understand what was going on.

Thanks Brock

On 6/1/05, Yaron <tclug at freakzilla.com> wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 1 Jun 2005, Brock Noland wrote:
> 
> > When running script which is not in my path I have always used
> > ./script_name. However at my current job most people are used not
> > having to use the ./.  My question is how do you get scripts to run
> > WITHOUT the ./?
> 
> That's because they have the current directory in the path.
> 
> THIS IS A HUGE SECURITY VULNERABILITY and you should never, EVER do it.
> Keep using the ./script. It's MUCH better than compromising security on
> your box. I cannot stress this enough: do NOT add Current Directory to the
> path.
> 
> 
> 
> Here's why this is important. One method of cracking a machine is
> replacing commonly run programs with trojan versions of the same program.
> It might be hard to replace /bin/ls, but NOT that hard to drop your trojan
> 'ls' program in many different directories. /tmp, for example, is always
> world-writable.
> 
> So lets say I put a trojan version of ls, cp, mv, ssh or whatever in /tmp.
> And then you cd to /tmp and execute one of these programs.
> 
> If Current Directory is in your path, you've just run one of my trojans.
> 
> So, once again. DON'T DO IT.
> 
> 
> -Yaron
> 
> --
> 
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