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From: maart@cs.vu.nl (Maarten Litmaath)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.sysadmin,comp.mail.uucp
Subject: why chroot(1) isn't setuid (was: Dangerous hole in Usenet!)
Message-ID: <1727@solo11.cs.vu.nl>
Date: 29 Nov 88 22:38:05 GMT
References: <1971@van-bc.UUCP> <572@comdesign.CDI.COM> <5517@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> <561@redsox.UUCP> <215@twwells.uucp> <155@ecicrl.UUCP>
Organization: V.U. Informatica, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Lines: 16

clewis@ecicrl.UUCP (Chris Lewis) writes:
\... can someone out there explain why chroot is privileged?  Or
\why /etc/chroot isn't setuid?

Consider a directory `etc' relative to the new root, containing a file
`passwd', which contains an entry `root', ... Get the idea?

\It seems pretty darn silly that some
\mechanism that can only be used for *reducing* access rights requires
\root permission.

It's a protection mechanism for ROOT: he's the ONLY guy that can do ANYTHING
on a UNIX system.
-- 
fcntl(fd, F_SETFL, FNDELAY):          |Maarten Litmaath @ VU Amsterdam:
      let's go weepin' in the corner! |maart@cs.vu.nl, mcvax!botter!maart