Re: Applescript vulnerability

In article <uce-41199D.14343319062008@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Gregory Weston <uce@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I suspect Dave's intention was to point out that the exploit worked on
his machine *despite* the fact that root logins are disabled. That this
condition was not a viable defense.

You can get to the root account thus:

[~]$ sudo su
Password:
sh-3.2# whoami
root
sh-3.2#

on almost any unixish machine, including OS X, with or without the root
account "enabled." This isn't as exploitable as the Slashdotted thing,
because you need an admin account with a password ... hang on ... nope,
that doesn't work from the Guest account but

[~]$ osascript -e 'tell app "ARDAgent" to do shell script "whoami"'

absolutely works. Ouch. The Guest account is there to give physical
access to people you don't particularly trust, no? So anyone with a
small knowledge of Applescript and unix commands has you by the short
and curlies.
--
W. Oates
.

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