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From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Security of chroot() (was: Dangerous hole in Usenet)
Message-ID: <1988Dec5.173308.1169@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1971@van-bc.UUCP> <572@comdesign.CDI.COM> <5517@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> <155@ecicrl.UUCP> <172@jetson.UPMA.MD.US> <945@dlhpedg.co.uk>
Date: Mon, 5 Dec 88 17:33:08 GMT

In article <945@dlhpedg.co.uk> cl@datlog.co.uk (Charles Lambert) writes:
>Good grief!  Do you mean to say that these fundamental programs cannot
>(or simply do not) check where the "real" root is?  Is it not possible to
>do so,  as it is possible to check the real userid?

It is difficult to do portably.  And at some point you've got to trust
something.  With chroot limited to the superuser, pathnames are trustworthy
unless you've got incompetent systems programmers.  Chroot was never meant
to be something that naive users would do every day.
-- 
SunOSish, adj:  requiring      |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
32-bit bug numbers.            | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu