On 30 Dec 2024, at 00:44, Douglas McIlroy <douglas.mcilroy(a)dartmouth.edu> wrote: I can supply a copy if no one else has beaten me to it. Ron Hardin subsequently pushed the limit even further. Unfortunately, I do not have a record of that work. Doug On Sat, Dec 28, 2024 at 9:54 PM Royce Williams <royce(a)techsolvency.com> wrote: > > Someone I know is seeking the original version of an internal Bell Labs memo from 1974 titled "Webster's Second on the Head of a Pin" by Morris and Thompson. The topic appears to be related to improving the speed of lookups or search. It's cited in a few papers as "Unpublished Technical Memo, Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ 1974." All I can find online is citations. Any leads appreciated! > > -- > Royce

On 12/29/24 8:44 AM, Douglas McIlroy wrote: Along these same lines, does anyone on the list have a copy of "J. A. Reeds, /bin/sh: The biggest UNIX security Loophole, 11217-840302-04TM, AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ (1984)"? Years ago, in another lifetime, I wrote and asked him for a copy, but never got a reply. -- ``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU chet(a)case.edu http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/

I wonder what Reeds meant. I know there are issues. For example, the 3B2 I administered for a while in the late 80s had multiple accounts with rsh, the restricted shell, as the login shell. That was okay, unless you used su and then had access to a root shell. HP/UX was way worse, with over 120 SUID shell scripts in the 90s. A much more interesting example of insecurity. But somehow, I'm guessing that's not what Reeds wrote about. Rik On Wed, Jan 1, 2025 at 8:02 AM Douglas McIlroy <douglas.mcilroy(a)dartmouth.edu> wrote: > > I have it and will try to scan it in the next few days. Bug me if it > doesn't appear. > > Doug > > On Tue, Dec 31, 2024 at 11:37 AM Chet Ramey <chet.ramey(a)case.edu> wrote: > > > > On 12/29/24 8:44 AM, Douglas McIlroy wrote: > > > I can supply a copy if no one else has beaten me to it. > > > > > > Ron Hardin subsequently pushed the limit even further. Unfortunately, > > > I do not have a record of that work. > > > > Along these same lines, does anyone on the list have a copy of > > > > "J. A. Reeds, /bin/sh: The biggest UNIX security Loophole, > > 11217-840302-04TM, AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ (1984)"? > > > > Years ago, in another lifetime, I wrote and asked him for a copy, but > > never got a reply. > > > > -- > > ``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer > > ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates > > Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU chet(a)case.edu http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/

I wonder what Reeds meant. I know there are issues.

For example, the 3B2 I administered for a while in the late 80s had multiple accounts with rsh, the restricted shell, as the login shell. That was okay, unless you used su and then had access to a root shell.

On Thu, Jan 2, 2025 at 7:23 AM Chet Ramey &lt;chet.ramey(a)case.edu <mailto:chet.ramey@case.edu>> wrote: On 1/1/25 1:11 PM, Rik Farrow wrote: rsh, used su That's an administrator problem. Part of setting up a restricted shell environment is creating a directory of necessary binaries and setting PATH appropriately. Each of these special accounts did have a home directory with a .profile to set up the restricted environment, then run a shell script to perform some task as root. For example, logging in as 'backup' would run /user/ backup/.profile and allow a non-privileged user to run a backup script as root. But typing "su backup" produced a root-owner shell without restrictions. You need to type "su - " to run the account's .profile script.

On Sat, Dec 28, 2024 at 05:53:48PM -0900, Royce Williams wrote: Labs Morris of Technical Doug McIlroy sent me a copy, it's now here: https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Documentation/TechReports/Bell_Labs/PinheadWeb… Thanks Doug!