[LBo] Curious about a security issue

[Lonnie Mullenix]

On Sun, 2007-02-11 at 21:56 +0100, Stefan Waidele wrote:
<snip>
> 
> On Ubuntu (inheriting much of debian's security), it is not possible for 
> regular users to read the raw device file:
> 
> stw at notebook:~$ cat /dev/hda
> cat: /dev/hda: Permission denied
> 
> But it is always good to watch out :)
> 
> Stefan

Hum, Very interesting.  I just ran the above command on my Gentoo system
and got huge amounts of info scrolling by in an xterm.  I killed it with
Ctrl-C and then I had to go in and kill the printer too, because it had
started it up.  Couple of blank pages and a few pages of gibberish.  No
idea how long it would have went.  And, only two partitions/folders are
not totally owned by root.

Maybe I need to investigate this a bit farther.

Lonnie

-- 
Running Gentoo and
Debian, enjoying the
MS free life on the
internet.