Making xlock setuid root

From: Stefan Rompf (srompfat_private)
Date: Fri Nov 06 1998 - 01:18:51 PST

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    At 02:41 05.11.98 -0400, Aaron Campbell wrote:
    
    >It's hard to tell how serious this is, but I'm sure it could be harmful in
    >some situations/environments. At any rate, a bug that should definitely be
    >fixed, especially since xlock is normally set-user-ID root.
    
    Instead of making xlock and other programs that need access to /etc/shadow
    setuid root, you can create a group named shadow, allow this group to read
    the shadow file and make all those programs setgid shadow. So if someone
    finds an exploit, all he can get is the shadow password file instead of
    immediate root access.
    
    This is nothing really new, I've tried it with xlock the first time in
    1995, so I cannot understand why Unix distributions still ship with the
    program setuid to root.
    
    cu.. Stefan
    
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