oss-security - Re: CVE request -- coreutils -- tty hijacking possible in "su" via TIOCSTI ioctl

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Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2011 11:55:11 +0200
From: Ludwig Nussel <ludwig.nussel@...e.de>
To: oss-security@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: Re: CVE request -- coreutils -- tty hijacking possible in "su" via TIOCSTI ioctl

Jan Lieskovsky wrote:
> Hello Josh, Steve, vendors,
> 
>    based on Debian BTS report:
>    [1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=628843
>        (first CVE-2011-XXYY required for Debian case)
> 
> looked more into original report:
> [2] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=173008
> 
> and the first paragraph of [2] suggests:
> "When starting a program via "su - user -c program" the user session
> can escape to the parent session by using the TIOCSTI ioctl to push
> characters into the input buffer.  This allows for example a non-root
> session to push "chmod 666 /etc/shadow" or similarly bad commands into
> the input buffer such  that after the end of the session they are
> executed."

The issue also reminds me that there are several su implemenations.
On Fedora and SUSE we have a patched coreutils version, Debian uses
the one from shadow-utils and then there's also a su from
SimplePAMApps, used by e.g. Owl. Of course each one has it's own
quirks and weird features. Does anyone still remember why a
particular implementation was chosen? :-)

cu
Ludwig

-- 
 (o_   Ludwig Nussel
 //\
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