Subject: Reducing the number of suid root applications

From: [email-masked] (Bernd Eckenfels)
Date: Mon, 29 Jul 1996 02:42:23 +0200 (MET DST)

Hi,

just checking the number of applications with sui/sgid on my system.
The suid from xlterm/color_xterm could be removed by using a special group
utmp and using sgid. Of course this needs to be checked with other tools,
but I think there should be no program with suid if it realy dont needs it.
The -C switch of xterm will not ork without the suid-root bit, but xconsole
is better for this, anyway (and admins can control if they want to allow
grabbing colsole output).

Greetings
Bernd

PS: i will file bugreports for applications I think the suid.root is
unnecessary, like xload.
-- 
  (OO)      -- [email-masked] --
 ( .. )  ecki@lina.{inka.de,ka.sub.org}  http://home.pages.de/~eckes/
  o--o     *plush*  2048/A2C51749  eckes@irc  +4972573817  *plush*
(O____O)       If privacy is outlawed only Outlaws have privacy

---

From: Ian Jackson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 1 Aug 96 02:27 BST

> grabbing colsole output).

xterm needs to be setuid root to handle pty allocation properly and
securely.

Ian.