Fw: Re: cross-platform virus

[Alan McKinnon]

On Sunday 09 April 2006 12:58, Peter Garrett wrote:

> > Not a loophole at all; that's the entire *point* of sudo - that
> > it won't ask for another password. That usefulness is greatly
> > reduced when you start saving tokens per-program/command line.
>
> Please correct me if I'm wrong - I was under the naive impression
> that the "whole point" of sudo was originally to give fine-grained
> control over who could run what commands requiring administrative
> privileges.

Yes, that's my understanding of it too.

> The fact that it is convenient not to have to re-type a password
> has not escaped me. It's kind of glaringly obvious, and last time I
> looked my IQ was above room temperature ;-)

Right now, the benefits outweigh the risk, and this default 
configuration is likely to continue as long as that is true in real 
life, as opposed to theoretical threats.
>
> That of course is not the point of my post or of the discussion. In
> the context, we are discussing whether that convenience miight or
> might not give an attacker a way to run something that the person
> using sudo does not intend.

It does give an attacker ways to do NastyStuff(tm), several people 
showed how to do it already in this thread, but none of us has seen 
such an exploit yet, or aren't saying if they have. When such an 
exploit does hit the streets, you can be confident that the default 
config will change - the benefit/risk scale will have tipped and the 
maintainers will respond in an appropriate way.

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan at linuxholdings dot co dot za
+27 82, double three seven, one nine three five