Q: A question of security vulnerability

Jim Choate ravage at einstein.ssz.com
Thu May 8 19:34:15 PDT 2003


Given a basic Linux (or *nix) system with a user bob. Assume that bob has
sudo capability. There are two approaches (I'm not going to use exact
syntax):

1.	bob	sh

2.	bob	All

So, in the first case bob can:  sudo sh -c "foo"

and in the second bob can: sudo foo

Why would the first approach represent a more secure mechanism?

It is true that sh could be a wrapper or have sticky bits, etc. We'll
assume these are not an issue. The point being why is running a program
directly as root in this manner less secure than running the program
through a shell as root?

Example? Explanation?

Thanks.


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