On Tue, Jan 17, 2006 at 02:17:50PM +0100, Paweł Madej wrote: > Hello, > > Today i've noticed that common user do not have /sbin and /usr/sbin dirs > in their PATH but they can start all the tasks from that directories for > example on server machine someone could make /sbin/shutdown and turn the > server off. For me it is very big security hole.
Just because a binary is accessible, doesn't mean the user executing it has the keys to the kingdom- the binary is executing under that user, meaning the execution context can do only what the user can do. This is why setuid can be problematic, it makes the binary execute under the owner rather then user calling it- non root can execute with root privs. Note also I said problematic- there are cases where this is useful/needed (mount for example), just has to be managed carefully. Either way... this isn't a security hole, would suggest you try executing some of the bins- as stated in the other email, this isn't an issue unless the user has gone and flagged those binaries setuid (eg, user did something _really_ dumb). Thread should move over to gentoo-user for further details on setuid (after a bit of googling hopefully :) ~harring
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