Date: Sat, 21 Feb 1998 11:13:36 -0800 From: "David E. Tweten" <tweten@ns.frihet.com> To: freebsd-security@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Find, Rm, and Root's Crontab Message-ID: <199802211913.LAA15953@ns.frihet.com>
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I'm being overwhelmed by exmh "#" files, so I investigated why they haven't seemed to go away on another machine since it was upgraded from Freebsd 1.1.5 (!) to the latest Stable. The answer is a very paranoid sounding and not very informative set of comment lines in /etc/daily. My next step was a search of the FreeBSD security e-mail archives. I don't seem to get along well enough with the mail archive search engine to be able to make it show an entire thread. It did find Chris Layne's forward of the original message pointing out that find and rm in /etc/daily constitute s security hole, given the weaknesses of each. The search engine didn't tell me anything about any decision as to what should be done. The original Linux poster's solution is offensive to me (sings all, dances all, deletes all, and written in Pearl). Potential solutions that appeal more to my simpler-is-better sensibilities are: fixing find not to get confused, and writing (in C!) an rm subset look-alike that won't follow symbolic links. A search of the Gnats data base failed to turn up any evidence of a choice having been made. So, what's the plan? Are we going to do anything beyond distributing /etc/daily with junk file elimination disabled? If so, what? And can I help? -- David E. Tweten | 2047-bit PGP fingerprint: | tweten@frihet.com 12141 Atrium Drive | E9 59 E7 5C 6B 88 B8 90 | tweten@and.com Saratoga, CA 95070-3162 | 65 30 2A A4 A0 BC 49 AE | (408) 446-4131 Those who make good products sell products; those who don't, sell solutions. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe security" in the body of the message
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