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From: simsong@athena.mit.edu (Simson L. Garfinkel)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: super_user in fs
Message-ID: <1142@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Date: Wed, 15-Jul-87 12:58:57 EDT
Article-I.D.: bloom-be.1142
Posted: Wed Jul 15 12:58:57 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 17-Jul-87 06:09:34 EDT
References: <462@csm9a.UUCP> <613@uokmax.UUCP>
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Reply-To: simsong@athena.mit.edu (Simson L. Garfinkel)
Organization: MIT Project Athena
Lines: 9

In article <613@uokmax.UUCP> rmtodd@uokmax.UUCP (Richard Michael Todd) writes:
>The trick is (in my opinion) one of the cleverest features of UNIX: the
>set-uid mode bit.  If you have a program which has this mode bit set and
>is owned by root, whenever that program is run it can do any system call
>that root can-- its "effective uid" is set to root.  This way system calls

I would like to point out that Bell Labs has a patent on the setuid bit.

................................................................simson