paths and permissions

[Greg McCann]

On 2/27/2004 at 10:45 AM Dave Lovelace <dave at firstcomp.biz> wrote:

>Anything that runs SUID root is in principle insecure, but the software's
>authors attempt to wall off the sections where it's actually running as
>root.  I don't know procmail's code, but I'd presume that by the time it's
>running the user's .procmailrc it's running as the user.

That is as it should be.  You certainly do not want users to be able to run a command as root simply by placing it in their .procmailrc file.  But in some peoples' systems it appears that users are able to update a non-world-writable wordlist.db with the "bogofilter -u" command in their .procmailrc.  On other systems, like mine, I have had to make wordlist.db world-writable for users to be able to update it from their own .procmailrc files.  I am running sendmail 8.12.10 and procmail 3.21.

One way to check what your system is doing is to add the following to your .procmailrc file.

LOGFILE=procmail.log
VERBOSE=off
LOGABSTRACT=all    [enable procmail logging if it is not already]
LOG="`id`          [log the id of the user the process is running as]
"

In my system it logs the id of the user who is receiving the mail.  I wonder if procmail is running as root on those systems where any users' procmail can write to a non-world-writeable wordlist.db.  That would make me very afraid.


Greg