On Fri, Jan 02, 2004 at 08:55:59AM -0800, Ben Barrett wrote:
>
>On Thu, 1 Jan 2004 21:01:14 -0800
>Jacob Meuser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>| On Thu, Jan 01, 2004 at 03:19:53PM -0800, Ben Barrett wrote:
>| > Ah yes, sudo is a Good Thing, although be wary of allowing "sudo su",
>| > for if you are trying to limit your normal users' actions, and get a log
>| > of what they sudo, you'll only ever see that they became root, at which
>| > point they have untrackable control.
>| 
>| That's only the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.  Don't forget that
>| such seemingly harmless programs as 'less' and 'more' can execute
>| commands, like "!sh".
>
>Are you talking about control-Z suspend or something else?
>

No, shell escapes.  Many *NIX programs, especially ones that originated
before job control became common, support some keystroke combination to
launch a subshell, so that the user can run a command without having to
exit from their current program and lose their work.  Vi, for example,
will do it from the ! keystroke, as will ed.  The launched subshell
has the powers and abilities of the program that launched it, so
"sudo vi" and ! will give you a root shell.

-- 
"That time in Seattle... was a nightmare.  I came out of it dead broke,
without a house, without anything except a girlfriend and a knowledge of
UNIX."  "Well, that's something," Avi says.  "Normally those two are
mutually exclusive."                    --Neal Stephenson, "Cryptonomicon"
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