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cpcallen commented on The early Unix history of chown() being restricted to root   utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/spa... · Posted by u/kencausey
cpcallen · 2 months ago
This reminds me of an interesting security incident that occurred on the undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca unix cluster while I was an undergrad, circa 1996.

When I'd started, the cluster had three SunOS servers, named cayley, descartes, and napier; undergrad math students had their home directory allocated on a local disk on one of these three machines, which each cross-mounted the others' via NFS. At this time, however, the Math Faculty Computing Facility had just received a fancy new dedicated NFS file server from (IIRC) NetApp, and all our home directories had been moved there instead, presumably freeing up desperately-needed CPU cycles on the three compute servers so we could run the Modula-3 and μC++ compilers.

One evening I was in one of the XTerm labs in the Math and Computer centre working on a CS assignment (the only alternative being to do from my dorm room via 2400 buad dialup). As was tradition, I had left the assignment until the night before it was due to start work on. Indeed, it seems that we all must have, because after getting part way through I needed to access some input data files that were shared from the home directory of the course account—something like ~csXYZ/assignments/N/input—only to find I could not read them.

These files were of course owned by the csXYZ course account and should have been either world-readable or readable by the corresponding csXYZ group to which all students registered that term belonged. Unfortunately something had gone wrong, and although the files were rw-r-----, they belonged to the wrong group, so that I and the other students in the class were not able to access them.

It now being after 6pm there was no hope of tracking down one of the course professors or the tutor to rectify this before morning (and it's quite likley the assignment submission deadline was 9am).

Fortunately, I was a naive and ignorant undergrad student, and not knowing what should and should not have been possible I began to think about how I might obtain access to the needed files.

I knew about suid and sgid binaries, and knew that on these modern SunOS 4 machines you could also have suid and sgid script, so I created a script to cat the needed files, then changed its group to match that to which the files belonged, then tried to chmod g+s the script—but of course this (correctly) failed with a message informing that I could not make my file sgid if I didn't belong to the group in question. I then took a different tack: I chgrped the script back to a gropu I did belong to, ran chmod g+s, then chgrped the script back to the group that owned the files I wanted to read.

I now know that this should have resulted in the script losing its setgid bit, but at the time I was unaware of the expected behaviour—and it seemed that the computer was as ignorant as I was because it duly changed the group as requested without resetting the setgid bit, and I was able to run the script, obtain the files I needed, and finish the assignment.

I then headed over to the CS Club office to discuss what had happened, because I was somewhat surprised this had worked and I wanted to understand why, and I knew that despite the lateness of the hour the office would certainly be open and very likely contain someone more expert than I who would be able to explain.

The office was indeed open but no explanation was forthcoming; instead, I was admonished not to discuss this security hole with anyone until I had reported it, in person, to the system administrators.

Thus it was that bright and early the next morning I found myself in Bill Ince's office with a printout of the terminal history containing a demonstration of the exploit in hand. I informed him I had a security issue to report, and handed him the printout.

He scanned the paper for a moment or two, and then replied simply "ahh, you found it".

It seems I was not the first to report the issue, and he explained that it was due to a bug in the new NetApp file server. He then turned monitor of the terminal on his desk around to show me a long list of filenames scrolling by, and (in hindsight rather unwisely) informed me that it was displaying a list of files that were vulnerable to being WRITTEN to due to the same hole.

He duly swore me to secrecy until the issue could be resolved by NetApp (which it was a few days later), thanked me, and sent me on my way.

cpcallen commented on Show HN: Swapple, a little daily puzzle on linear reversible circuit synthesis   swapple.fuglede.dk... · Posted by u/fuglede_
cpcallen · 3 months ago
Seems interesting but for some reason on Chrome on my iPhone 13 mini the page is too big for the screen: I have to pinch zoom out to see the X that dismisses the instructions, and can't scroll the about page.

Did you make some assumptions about the minimum window / screen size based on oversized modern smartphones, forgetting that lots of us still cling to more reasonably sized older devices?

cpcallen commented on Next.js is infuriating   blog.meca.sh/3lxoty3shjc2... · Posted by u/Bogdanp
cpcallen · 4 months ago
You know what else is infuriating? Pages that won't load (at all—just show a blank page, or in this case a too many redirects error—if you do not have cookies and local storage enabled.
cpcallen commented on Emailing a one-time code is worse than passwords   blog.danielh.cc/blog/pass... · Posted by u/max__dev
dathinab · 5 months ago
sure, it being a 6 digit code which has potential for social engineering can be an issue

like similar to if you get a "your login" yes/no prompt on a authentication app, but a bit less easy to social engineer but a in turn also suspect to bruteforce attacks (similar to how TOTP is suspect to it)

through on the other hand

- some stuff has so low need of security that it's fine (like configuration site for email news letters or similar where you have to have a mail only based unlock)

- if someone has your email they can do a password reset

- if you replace email code with a login link you some cross device hurdles but fix some of of social enginering vectors (i.e. it's like a password reset on every login)

- you still can combine it with 2FA which if combined with link instead of pin is basically the password reset flow => should be reasonable secure

=> eitherway that login was designed for very low security use cases where you also wouldn't ever bother with 2FA as losing the account doesn't matter, IMHO don't use it for something else :smh:

cpcallen · 5 months ago
Did you mean to post this comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44819917 ?
cpcallen commented on Objects should shut up   dustri.org/b/objects-shou... · Posted by u/gm678
jaza · 5 months ago
This is why I've never used wireless earphones (I just use the stock wired earphones that come with the phone). Sure, the wires are tangled every time I pull them out of my pocket. But they never need charging! That, plus a loathing of Bluetooth.
cpcallen · 5 months ago
"I just use the stock wired earphones that come with the phone"

If only that were still a thing.

cpcallen commented on Five Years After   isonomiaquarterly.com/arc... · Posted by u/brandonlc
stevenhuang · 5 months ago
I don't get it. What is this site? Is there supposed to be a moral to this story?
cpcallen · 5 months ago
Well, their "About" page explains that it's a journal "dedicated to two big ideas…: equality under the law and global federalism." But more relevantly, also that they publish "short stories and memoirs, because stories — shared at the fire pit of hunting camps and at feasts on Thanksgiving Day or Eid al-Fitr — are also essential to who we are."

As with any kind of literary fiction, what moral (if any) you take from this story is largely up to you.

cpcallen commented on Engineer creates ad block for the real world with augmented reality glasses   tomshardware.com/maker-st... · Posted by u/LorenDB
cpcallen · 6 months ago
Not to disparage Stijn's efforts, but he's about a quarter century late to the AR ad-blocking game: when Steve Mann came give a talk at the University of Waterloo whilst I was an undergrad there (circa 1997–2000), one of the applications of his wearable computer that he demonstrated was the ability to recognise and block ads on posters and billboards.

Of course at the time the computing power needed just to do the image tracking was far in excess of what could be carried on his person, so it involved a (possibly pre-WiFi) radio link to a lab network of graphics workstations, and as far as I know the software wasn't doing any kind of AI ad identification, but only matching pre-tagged ad images (or maybe just tracking the physical locations of the user vs the known location of the ads, via GPS + INS + video tracking).

It was nevertheless an exceedingly impressive demo that it has taken quite some time to make a significant improvement on.

cpcallen commented on A feature-rich Hacker News client   github.com/Livinglist/Hac... · Posted by u/taubek
cpcallen · a year ago
I am obviously not the target audience for this, because it seems to be the opposite of what I want: I'd much rather just have a text-only homepage than anything with thumbnails.

I'd really love an iOS app for Reddit that made the site look more like this one (or like the old `.compact` version did).

cpcallen commented on Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts   arstechnica.com/health/20... · Posted by u/pseudolus
cpcallen · a year ago
Technology (e.g. highly addictive short-form video apps) seems like a likely explanation; fear of fentanyl is less plausible (it would not deter drinking or vaping). Surely the biggest factor, however, is just the interruption of social contagion?

I strongly suspect that physically separating highschool students from their older peers for a couple of years meant that most of the older kids who were in to drugs etc. graduated and were not around to introduce their younger peers to these vices.

It's the flip side of the phenomenon whereby many university societies shut down and either never reopened after the pandemic or struggled to get going again (examples I know about including swing dance clubs and solar car racing teams), because the only students with enough experience to teach their younger peers had by then all graduated.

cpcallen commented on Magic Circle tries to track down first female member – who posed as a man   theguardian.com/stage/202... · Posted by u/emigre
lukan · a year ago
I think the new circle is somewhat different from the last one?

Also I don't think it is stalking, when they did not even found her. If they did and she said go away, and they pressured on - that would be stalking. As of now, it is likely she does not even know about it.

cpcallen · a year ago
Well, given that it's in _The Guardian_, there's a pretty good chance that she is indeed now aware of it.

Minor quibble: the current Magic Circle is not "different from the last one" because it is the same organisation—though it has obviously had a significant change of policy and a considerable turnover of membership in the three and a half decades since Sophie Lloyd was accepted as a member.

u/cpcallen

KarmaCake day779May 31, 2013View Original