[SOLVED] LFS and /sbin security issues?

exvor · 01-17-2010, 08:04 PM

So here is the deal. I was trying to figure out what my thumb drive had set for the partition type so I needed to run cfdisk. Anyway cfdisk is located in /sbin on my system. So I ran the command /sbin/cfdisk and it worked and allowed me to pull up the thumb drive and even work with and save partitions. Well that did not concern me too much since I am supposed to have access to that device anyway but it got me thinking if I could do it with the root partition drive and low and behold it does and I am also allowed to run anything in /sbin? From what I remember are users not supposed to be able to execute code here? The permissions for this directory are drwxr_xr_x which allows all users to be able to execute code here. This is how the directories are setup by default when building a system. Or is having normal user access to the programs in sbin not a problem?

exvor · 01-17-2010, 08:10 PM

Hmmm never mind it seams that /sbin was not created for security reasons but just as a way to seperate binaries for managing the system and normal user programs.

Quote:

We recommend that users have read and execute permission for everything
in /sbin except, perhaps, certain setuid and setgid programs. The
division between /bin and /sbin was not created for security reasons or
to prevent users from seeing the operating system, but to provide a
good partition between binaries that everyone uses and ones that are
primarily used for administration tasks. There is no inherent security
advantage in making /sbin off-limits for users.

Quote taken from: http://tldp.org/LDP/Linux-Filesystem...html/sbin.html