

From: Manifestation
Subject: Security holes manifest themselves in (broadly) four ways...
Date: 11.10.93

( Please contribute by sending E-Mail to <scott@santafe.edu> ... )

[quoting from the comp.security.unix FAQ]
Security holes manifest themselves in (broadly) four ways:

1) Physical Security Holes.

- Where the potential problem is caused by giving unauthorised persons
physical access to the machine, where this might allow them to perform
things that they shouldn't be able to do.

A good example of this would be a public workstation room where it would
be trivial for a user to reboot a machine into single-user mode and muck
around with the workstation filestore, if precautions are not taken.

Another example of this is the need to restrict access to confidential
backup tapes, which may (otherwise) be read by any user with access to
the tapes and a tape drive, whether they are meant to have permission or
not.

2) Software Security Holes

- Where the problem is caused by badly written items of "privledged"
software (daemons, cronjobs) which can be compromised into doing things
which they shouldn't oughta.

The most famous example of this is the "sendmail debug" hole (see
bibliography) which would enable a cracker to bootstrap a "root" shell.
This could be used to delete your filestore, create a new account, copy
your password file, anything.

(Contrary to popular opinion, crack attacks via sendma