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Message-ID: <9164016d-f642-4ceb-bde8-03e09303e038@oracle.com>
Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2026 09:27:39 -0800
From: Alan Coopersmith <alan.coopersmith@...cle.com>
To: oss-security@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: Buffer overflow in /bin/su from UNIX v4
Late last year, a tape was found containing the only known copy of Bell Labs
Research Unix Version 4 from 1973 - the version in which UNIX was rewritten
from assembly into the then-new C programming language. Since then a number
of folks have been running the recovered software in PDP-11 simulators.
https://sigma-star.at/blog/2025/12/unix-v4-buffer-overflow/ examines the
source code for su.c and shows that the buffer for password input is a
simple 100 character array, but the loop to read password input has no
boundary checks and will happily keep writing long past the end of the
buffer.
Doug McIlroy from the original Bell Labs Unix team points out that
"Overflowable buffers were common in those days." and that there are
likely more to be found in the UNIX v4 source code, in the thread at
https://www.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2026-January/032966.html
--
-Alan Coopersmith- alan.coopersmith@...cle.com
Oracle Solaris Engineering - https://blogs.oracle.com/solaris
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