From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
To: Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>
Cc: 30912@debbugs.gnu.org, beebe@math.utah.edu
Subject: bug#30912: emacs as a route to privilege escalation
Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2018 14:15:28 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <E1eznhQ-0000Cr-Th@fencepost.gnu.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <m3in9nr7cy.fsf@gnus.org> (message from Lars Ingebrigtsen on Fri, 23 Mar 2018 00:57:49 +0100)
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> It seems to be pure nonsense. You can't edit root's ~/.emacs without
> root privilege.
In principle, that should be the case, but sometimes it isn't.
Basically, it is true if the kernel has no bugs.
However, the kernel often does have a bug which can
be used for "privilege escalation." When such an exploit
is available, problems in user programs can be used to take
control of the computer.
But this does not require a add-on. Bugs in programs that
display files obtained over the web, even files that are not
supposed to contain code at all, can be used to do this.
It is a real problem.
--
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See https://stallman.org/skype.html.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2018-03-24 18:15 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 4+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2018-03-22 23:41 bug#30912: emacs as a route to privilege escalation Nelson H. F. Beebe
2018-03-22 23:57 ` Lars Ingebrigtsen
2018-03-24 18:15 ` Richard Stallman [this message]
2018-03-23 0:05 ` Noam Postavsky
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