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Date:      Tue, 16 Jul 1996 08:34:48 -0600
From:      Sean Kelly <kelly@fsl.noaa.gov>
To:        taob@io.org
Cc:        phk@freebsd.org, freebsd-security@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: suidness of /usr/bin/login
Message-ID:  <199607161434.OAA26815@gatekeeper.fsl.noaa.gov>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.NEB.3.92.960715223420.8904G-100000@zap.io.org> (message from Brian Tao on Mon, 15 Jul 1996 22:36:24 -0400 (EDT))

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>>>>> "Brian" == Brian Tao <taob@io.org> writes:

    Brian>     Does /usr/bin/login need to be setuid root?  Since it
    Brian> is normally only called by telnetd (which already runs as
    Brian> root), does it have to be setuid root as well?  What else
    Brian> uses it?

getty also uses it.

And in general, users are capable of typing

	exec /usr/bin/login

to terminate one login session and start another, on the same tty/pty.
In fact, csh/tcsh has a builtin `login' which does the exec.

To offer this feature, it needs to be setuid-root.

-- 
Sean Kelly                          
NOAA Forecast Systems Laboratory    kelly@fsl.noaa.gov
Boulder Colorado USA                http://www-sdd.fsl.noaa.gov/~kelly/



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