Slashdot Mirror
Grinch Vulnerability Could Put a Hole In Your Linux Stocking
itwbennett writes In a blog post Tuesday, security service provider Alert Logic warned of a Linux vulnerability, named grinch after the well-known Dr. Seuss character, that could provide attackers with unfettered root access. The fundamental flaw resides in the Linux authorization system, which can inadvertently allow privilege escalation, granting a user full administrative access. Alert Logic warned that Grinch could be as severe as the Shellshock flaw that roiled the Internet in September.
Update: 12/19 04:47 GMT by S : Reader deathcamaro points out that Red Hat and others say this is not a flaw at all, but expected behavior.
The flaw we're seeing here is various "computer security journalists" (and journals) destroying their reputations.
This is on the order of discovering that big heavy things that fall on your foot can cause pain.
Which Linux systems include the wheel group? Haven't come across that on Linux systems in years (if ever). That's a BSD thing, where GID 0 is "wheel".
On Linux, GID 0 is "root". Or, at least, every Linux system I've used in the past 10 years (none of which are RedHat, though; they do weird and not-so-wonderful things over there)
One of the first things we do on our Linux systems is create the "wheel" group as a system group (UID under 100), and add our admin users to that group. No users go into GID 0. And sudo is configured to only allow group wheel access to things they need access to.