In some mail from Gadi Evron, sie said: > > On Tue, 13 Feb 2007, Michael Wojcik wrote: > > > > From: Thierry Zoller [mailto:Thierry@xxxxxxxxx] > > > Sent: Monday, 12 February, 2007 07:52 > > > > > > GE> telnet -l "-froot" [hostname] > > > > > > Should we really consider this a BUG ? With all due respect, this > > > reads, smells and probably tastes like a backdoor > > > > It's a bug. I recall it being found and fixed in AIX many years ago. > > Embarassing for Sun that it's still in Solaris, though. > > > > It's actually caused by a "feature" of login; the bug is in programs > > that exec login and pass "-froot" to it, and in preserving this feature > > of login at all. > > > > A quick Google search found Usenet postings about it from 1994; I'm sure > > it was known well before then. > > Hi Michael. Thank you for making that issue public (about login). Haven't > seen it posted anywhere. > > One note: although it could just as well be a bug, who says it was not a > backdoor in the early 90's? > > Also, I understand this does not work on older Solaris/SunOS systems > (anyone can verify?) which adds to my personal interest in the > possibility. I refuse to believe someone is that funny/sad. See Casper Dik's email about when it was introduced... He's not lieing...which is to say your email should not have made it out to the list.... I just tried it locally with 5.7 and the result was: $ telnet -l -froot localhost Trying 127.0.0.1... Connected to localhost. Escape character is '^]'. Have you considered using SSH? login: telnet> Connection closed. There are two methods to pass information through to telnet from a remote connection as part of the telnet protocol: - username - terminal type If either of these are passed through to the command line of /bin/login then precautions need to be taken. Darren
