Recommendations for suid executables

[Stuart Carmichael]

Can anyone point me in the direction of HP recommendations for suid exe's? I'm wondering why there are so many which have suid set, for example utilities which should probably be run as root, swinstall and associated exe's, LVM binaries (lv* and vg*).

I'm expecting a security audit in the near future, and would like to be able to answer questions which relate to these executables. The available documentation is very "thin".

I'm running HPUX 11.0, the above is true for older installs of 11.0 (1997) as well as the latest releases.

Also, anyone know why there are two different sets of LVM exe's (eg /sbin/vg* and /usr/sbin/vg*) - both sets appear to be different versions...

[Patrick Wallek]

Can't really give you a good answer for the SUID stuff, but I can answer the LVM command question.

There are 2 versions there so that you can use the /sbin version while you are in singlue user mode with no LVs available except /.

The /sbin versions will be different because they will include all needed libraries within the executable. The /usr/sbin version will not have them included when compiled.

[Steven Sim Kok Leong]

Hi,

With regards to your question on setuid/setgid, take a look at the CIS's HP-UX security benchmark which can be found at:

http://www.cisecurity.org/bench_HPUX.html

Using the automated testing tool supplied with the benchmark, it will flag unexpected setuid and setgid applications on the system.

The benchmark also gives recommendations of HP-UX binaries with default setuid settings that have a history of significant security risk and should be turned off.

Hope this helps. Regards.

Steven Sim Kok Leong