Title

User start-up files must not execute world-writable programs. (Cat II impact)

Discussion

If start-up files execute world-writable programs, especially in unprotected directories, they could be maliciously modified to become trojans that destroy user files or otherwise compromise the system at the user, or higher, level. If the system is compromised at the user level, it is much easier to eventually compromise the system at the root and network level.

Check Content

Check local initialization files for any executed world-writable programs or scripts and scripts executing from world writable directories. Procedure: For each home directory on the system make a list of files referenced within any local initialization script. Show the mode for each file and its parent directory. # FILES=".bashrc .bash_login .bash_logout .bash_profile .cshrc .kshrc .login .logout .profile .tcshrc .env .dtprofile .dispatch .emacs .exrc"; # for HOMEDIR in `cut -d: -f6 /etc/passwd|sort|uniq`;do for INIFILE in $FILES;do REFLIST=`egrep " [\"~]?/" ${HOMEDIR}/${INIFILE} 2>/dev/null|sed "s/.*\([~ \"]\/[\.0-9A-Za-z_\/\-]*\).*/\1/"`;for REFFILE in $REFLIST;do FULLREF=`echo $REFFILE|sed "s:\~:${HOMEDIR}:g"|sed "s:^\s*::g"`;dirname $FULLREF|xargs stat -c "dir:%a:%n";stat -c "file:%:%n" $FULLREF;done;done; done|sort|uniq If any local initialization file executes a world-writable program or script or a script from a world-writable directory, this is a finding.

Fix Text

Remove the world-writable permission of files referenced by local initialization scripts, or remove the references to these files in the local initialization scripts.

Additional Identifiers

Rule ID: SV-45162r1_rule

Vulnerability ID: V-4087

Group Title: GEN001940

Expert Comments

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