------------------- What's new for version 3.30.0: A. Added '-t' option, to test if a command exists, and if so if this user may execute it at this moment. ------------------- What's new for version 3.28.0: A. Added '-r requiredpath' option, to allow a program to insist that the FullPath be the same program as the requiredpath, else it's an error. ------------------- What's new for version 3.27.0: A. Modified 'super -c' to exit with non-zero exit code if there is a syntax error. Requested by Gordon Lack, gml4410@ggr.co.uk B. Performance enchancement: store various user/group/host/pattern data in a hash table, so as to avoid many repeated NIS calls when working with a large super.tab file. "The result was that I cut the number of NIS calls made when running through an entire file's tests (super with no args) from 4230 to 177. This has a *big* effect on the elapsed time too." (From Gordon Lack, gml4410@ggr.co.uk) C. Additional syntax checking: wherever super does brace-globbing, it explicitly checks for balanced braces. ------------------- What's new for version 3.26.3: A. Fix for 'super -c' when SUPERDIR has been set to other than /usr/local/lib. (From Gordon Lack, gml4410@ggr.co.uk) ------------------- What's new for version 3.26.2: A. Fix for HP-UX 11i in trusted mode, from Mike Cross . ------------------- What's new for version 3.26.1: A. Fix for super variable re-definition bug. When changing the definition of a variable, super deallocated a string that hsearch() tried to reference. Bug discovery and fix by Michael Steffens . ------------------- What's new for version 3.26.0: A. Cumulation of 3.25.x changes. ------------------- What's new for version 3.25.3: A. Fixed reference to get_pam() that shouldn't be present when building w/o pam support. Reported by Gabor Z. Papp (gzp@papp.hu) ------------------- What's new for version 3.25.2: A. Fixed bug in 3.25.1... ------------------- What's new for version 3.25.1: A. Fixed handling of argMMM-NNN options. Problem reported by cmoulin@simplerezo.com. ------------------- What's new for version 3.25.0: A. Super tries to obtain the user's authentication data early (before it yields setuid-root privileges), and it does this even before reading the super.tab file. If super is unable to obtain this info, it will no longer print error messages, unless the specific command requires user authentication. B. Super tries to record the time of the user's authentication, which allows it to trust the same user for some additional time w/o re-entering authentication data. If it's unable to record the timestamp, it doesn't generate error messages unless this particular command has the renewtime option set (typically this is done as a global option). C. Cleaned up some error messages / warnings. ------------------- What's new for version 3.24.1: A. BUGFIX for 3.24.0 / shell patterns syntax enhancement: The last version used this goofy pattern: :if $PATTERNS == shell :global arg1-99="[-/:+._a-zA-Z0-9]*" Of course, this only restricts the first character to the desired one; ordinary shell patterns can't express the desired restrictions at all! In order to let shell patterns do the desired kind of matching, I've added new syntax for shell patterns: when the pattern is [[...]] -- that is, it begins with "[[" and ends with "]]" -- then it's a special case that means each and every character in the string must match the pattern [...]. The new rule in the super.tab file can now be: :if $PATTERNS == shell :global arg1-99="[[-/:+._a-zA-Z0-9]]" :if $PATTERNS != shell :global arg1-99="^[-/:+._a-zA-Z0-9]*$$" ------------------- What's new for version 3.24.0: A. Changed option args and nargs to be global as well as local. (Suggested by Henrik Strom ) B. Added builtin variable PATTERNS to carry the value of the global patterns option. Combined with (A), your super.tab file can include these entries for limiting what can be done without local settings: # By default, allow only 0 or 1 argument :global nargs=0-1 # By default, each argument must be a simple word with no # characters that might be srecial to a shell: :if $PATTERNS == shell :global arg1-99="[-/:+._a-zA-Z0-9]*" :if $PATTERNS != shell :global arg1-99="^[-/:+._a-zA-Z0-9]*$$" ------------------- What's new for version 3.23.0: A. Fixed format string vulnerability. (Incremented version number instead of patch number to emphasize this change is important.) (From Max Vozeler , via Robert Luberda ) ------------------- What's new for version 3.22.2: A. Better syslog handling. Instead of compile-time choice of the rsyslog() vs syslog() routines, the program now makes the selection at runtime. By default, the normal openlog() and syslog() functions are used. However, if a loghost is named (using global option rlog_host=xxxx) before any syslog message is generated, the functions ropenlog() and rsyslog() are used instead. ------------------- What's new for version 3.22.1: A. Bugfix for new options euid and egid (added 3.21.0), in which one of the id's would overwrite the other. (From Robert Luberda ) B. Bugfix for missing save/restore of errno, causing an incorrect error message. (From Robert Luberda ) C. Bugfix: remove unwanted override of syslog facility and priority. (From Robert Luberda ) D. Bugfix: if your system didn't support sysinfo(SI_SYSNAME, ...), there was a missing return statement in add_sysinfo_variables(). (From Gordon Lack, gml4410@ggr.co.uk) E. Bugfix: Linux pw lookup didn't have fallback if /etc/shadow was missing. (From Gordon Lack, gml4410@ggr.co.uk) F. Long series of minor edits to remove all compiler warnings generated by gcc -Wall. (From Robert Luberda ) ------------------- What's new for version 3.22.0: A. Added flexibility to syslog facility/level setting; e.g. auth.local1 is now legal, in addition to "LOG_AUTH|LOG_LOCAL1". B. Fixed bug that disallowed whitespace in strings such as that in A. ------------------- What's new for version 3.21.5: A. Fixed a minor glitch in the configure script. ------------------- What's new for version 3.21.4: A. Fixed install of the "barebones.tab" file. ------------------- What's new for version 3.21.2: A. Generalized support for passwords: a) all encrypted password beginning "$" are now handled correctly (hence Linux, *BSD, Solaris 9, ...) b) extended DES (encrypted password begins "_") now handled correctly. B. Fixd approval checks for root. Root was being given permission to execute commands that explicitly said !root. C. Added some notes to man page. D. Minor improvement to error messages. ------------------- What's new for version 3.21.0: A. Added options euid and egid to allow setting the effective uid and gid separately from changing the real id's. A few very old versions of Unix don't provide the setre[ug]id functions, and attempting to use the e{u,g}id options will cause an error. B. Fixed reading of passwd/shadow files so that the format $n$salt$passwd is understood on Linux systems. C. Added FreeBSD passwd handling, again to recognize fmt $n$salt$passwd. ------------------- What's new for version 3.20.1: A. ICANON is no longer disabled in getpass() -- otherwise, getpass() hung for some os's. (From Gordon Lack, gml4410@ggr.co.uk) B. Fixed some missing return values. (From Michael Steffens michael.steffens@hp.com) ------------------- What's new for version 3.20.0: A. Typo in utils.c would cause super to use syslog level LOG_NEWS instead of LOG_RFS, if you tried to select the latter. ------------------- What's new for version 3.19.0: A. SECURITY FIX: Patched syslog use error. All previous versions allow local root exploit when syslog() use is enabled. Workaround for earlier versions: put "syslog=n" into :global line of the super.tab file. ------------------- What's new for version 3.18.0: A. Per user request, added option to force passwords to be read from stdin. ------------------- What's new for version 3.17.2: A. Minor man page improvements. ------------------- What's new for version 3.17.1: A. Double-checks on uid and gid, to make sure they were really changed as they should have been. ------------------- What's new for version 3.17.0: A. argNNN matching now accepts brace-enclosed list (from Boleslav Bobcik, xbobcik@informatics.muni.cz) B. If your system-supplied regex is POSIX-compatible, then posix regular expressions are now supported; use :global patterns=posix to enable them. The default is case-sensitive, basic regular expressions. To get extended regular expressions (see your POSIX regular expression man page), use :global patterns=posix/extended To add ignore-case, use :global patterns=posix/extended/icase ------------------- What's new for version 3.16.1: A. pam.o was listed twice in the Makefile. (from Boleslav Bobcik, xbobcik@informatics.muni.cz) B. Missing comment delimiters around an #ifdef comment. (from Boleslav Bobcik, xbobcik@informatics.muni.cz) ------------------- What's new for version 3.16.0: This is the stable culmination of the changes in the 3.15.x enhancements. The previous stable version was 3.14.0. The last version to have a known security problem was 3.12.0. In brief, the changes include the following (the version number tells when the capability was added; check that section for more info): A. Added PAM support. (3.15.5, 3.15.6) C. The use of password=y|n is deprecated; it's been replaced by the more general auth=y|n and authtype=xxx mechanism. (3.15.5) D. **** BEHAVIOR CHANGE FOR ROOT **** The new behavior is *usually* the same as the old behavior, but give you more control. (3.15.4) E. Added support for shadow passwords in Digital Unix 4.x. (3.15.3) F. Fixes for HP-UX 11.0 with tcb enabled. (3.15.0, 3.15.7) G. Fixed an error in printing a message when super is _not_ running setuid-root. (Hence this is not a security fix.) (3.15.2) H. Added option to let you specify the prompt for password (3.15.2) I. Improved description of some envvars. (3.15.2) J. Corrected processing of "die=message" option. (3.15.2) K. Minor readability improvements. (3.15.0) L. Trivial changes to the format of the -h and -H outputs. (3.15.6) ------------------- What's new for version 3.15.7: A. Modifications to support HP-UX 11.0 with tcb: it uses crypt() instead of bigcrypt() [the latter is used by HP-UX 10.x. ------------------- What's new for version 3.15.6: A. Trivial changes to the format of the -h and -H outputs. B. Added "--disable-pam" configure option to disable PAM support, even if compile host has PAM. Useful if the executable is going to be used on hosts that don't have the PAM shareable libraries. ------------------- What's new for version 3.15.5: A. Added Linux PAM support. To support PAM, there are new options (global or local): auth=y|n (default=n; replaces password=y|n) authtype=password|pam (default=password) authprompt="" If you want to use the same authentication method for all the commands that require user authentication, it's convenient to put authtype=xxx on a :global option line, and then you only need to add "auth=y" on the lines that require options. B. The use of password=y|n is deprecated. To maintain backwards-compatibility, the following expressions are equivalent: password=y <--> auth=y authtype=password password=n <--> auth=n ------------------- What's new for version 3.15.4: A. **** BEHAVIOR CHANGE FOR ROOT **** The rule for 'root' using super has been changed! The new behavior is *usually* the same as the old behavior, but the new rules give you more control over root. New behavior: super acts as if the very first pattern to match is "root", and then applies its ordinary pattern-matching rules. The resul is a nice simplification & clarification of the rules: root: default allow others: default deny ------------------- What's new for version 3.15.3: A. Added support for shadow passwords in Digital Unix 4.x. ------------------- What's new for version 3.15.2: A. Fixed an error in printing a message when super is _not_ running setuid-root. (Hence this is not a security fix.) B. Added option authprompt="some string", to let you specify the prompt for password. Variable substitution is done on the message before printing. C. Improved description of ORIG_USER, ORIG_LOGNAME, and ORIG_HOME, to emphasize that these values are constructed by super and hence safe to use. D. Corrected processing so that a "die=message" option doesn't stop processing when in give-help mode. E. Modified the processing of "die=message" so that the message is printed without any surrounding foo-fah-rah: just the super.tab message and nothing else. Variable substitution is done on the message before printing. ------------------- What's new for version 3.15: A. Minor readability improvements. B. Fix for HP-UX 11.0 with tcb enabled: the argument list of the (undocumented but essential) getpasswd() function has changed between 10.20 and 11.0. ------------------- What's new for version 3.14.0: *** NOTE *** Super has adopted the Linux version numbering convention. That is, the odd-numbered minor versions are development versions, and even-numbered minor versions are stable releases (super uses version numbers in the format major.minor.patchlevel). This is the stable culmination of the changes in the 3.13.x enhancements. The previous stable version was 3.12.2. The last version to have a known security problem was 3.12.0. In brief, the changes include the following (the version number tells when the capability was added; check that section for more info): A. A new file, super.init, is now processed by super! (3.13.6) B. New command-line option, `-o file', for symlinks to per-user commands. (3.13.6) C. Allow 'loginname:', in addition to 'loginname:cmd' (3.13.6) D. Added CALLER and CALL_HOME builtin variables. (3.13.10) E. Added new builtin variables: HOST, SUPER_OWNER, SUPER_HOME. (3.13.6) F. Added new variable IS_USERTAB. (3.13.7) G. New super.tab option, checkvar=xxx, to require user to enter variables. (3.13.6) H. New super.tab command, :getenv, to import environment variables. (3.13.6) I. Added owner=xxx and group=yyy options to the :include command. (3.13.6) J. Added new global command ":die" to force immediate exit. (3.13.6) K. Moved get_encrypted_passwd() before super drops privs. (3.13.6) L. Modifications to support HP-UX 10.20 running with tcb. (3.13.6) M. Patched a dumb bug -- didn't initialize -o flag to null ptr. (3.13.9) N. Patched dumb bug in the 3.13.6/3.13.7 code. (3.13.8) O. A variety of bugfixes. (3.13.6) ------------------- What's new for version 3.13.10: A. Added two built-in variables that can be helpful super.tab files: $CALLER is the login name of the of account invoking super, and $CALLER_HOME is the home directory of $CALLER. Sample use: sam /usr/sbin/sam group~operator uid=0 \ env=DISPLAY \ setenv=XAUTHORITY=$CALLER_HOME/.Xauthority Here, the "operator" group can execute 'sam' as root, and the GUI will display at the caller's display (due to env=DISPLAY). Since the XAUTHORITY envvar is set to the caller's .Xauthority file, this will give the caller access to the same displays to which s/he already has access. ------------------- What's new for version 3.13.9: A. Patched another dumb bug -- didn't initialize -o flag to null ptr. ------------------- What's new for version 3.13.8: A. Patched dumb bug in the 3.13.6/3.13.7 code -- failed to check for null pointer. ------------------- What's new for version 3.13.7: A. Added new variable IS_USERTAB. This has the value "yes" if super is processing a `user:cmd'-type command, and "no" otherwise. The allows the super.init to act differently depending on how it is being invoked. ------------------- What's new for version 3.13.6: A. A new file, super.init, is now processed by super! It is located in the same directory as super.tab, and must be owned by root and be world-readable. If it doesn't exist, the usual processing of super.tab and per-user .supertab files is done. If super.init does exist, it is processed exactly as if each super.tab and per-user .supertab file began with: :include /etc/super.init owner=root (except that "/etc" is replaced with the super.tab directory.) This allows one to have a uniform configuration file applied to every super-executed command. Note that the configuration file should _only_ contain entries that are appropriate for both root-executed super commands and per-user super commands. It is not a good idea to include commands in the super.init file; it should preferably contain only the builtin colon-commands (:global, :define, :if, :die, etc). B. New command-line option, `-o file', for symlinks to per-user commands. The `-o file' makes it possible to create symlinks to per-user commands, analogous to the manner in which super interprets symlinks to itself. For instance, if "xyz" is a symlink to the super command, then invoking "xyz" is a shorthand for "super xyz". Similarly, the `-o file' option can be used to make the following completely equivalent: super joe:xyz [args] (1) xyz [args] (2) For this method to work, "xyz" must be a symlink to the desired .supertab file (here, ~joe/.supertab), and the .supertab file must be made executable and begin with the line #! /usr/bin/super -o (Of course you should replace /usr/bin/super with the actual path to super.) If the "#!" line would be longer than the typical Unix limit of 32 characters, you can instead start the .supertab file with: #! /bin/sh # Keep this backslash -> \ exec /long/path/to/the/super/executable -o $0 ${1+"$@"} ... (This takes advantage of the fact that super allows comments to be backslash-continued, but the shell doesn't.) This works as follows: if /path/to/xyz is a symlink to some user's .supertab file, and the .supertab file begins with "#! /path/to/super -o", then the shell will invoke super with arguments something like super -o /path/to/xyz [args] Super checks that /path/to/xyz is a link to a real .supertab file, and then always turns the last part of the path (here "xyz") into the command to execute. ** Security Warning ** Note that the caller is trusting that the .supertab file will actually begin `#! /path/to/super', and not be changed to contain something like `rm *"! Of course, this doesn't apply to the non-symlink form, `super joe:xyz'. C. Allow 'loginname:', in addition to 'loginname:cmd' A modification to the syntax for invoking per-user commands allows you to invoke help listings for the per-user files. The original syntax was restricted to something like this: super joe:xyz which executes command xyz from joe's .supertab file. The new rule is that if the "xyz" part can be missing: super joe: or super -H joe: gets command listings for joe's .supertab just as plain "super" or "super -H" gets command listings for the normal super.tab file. D. New super.tab option, checkvar=xxx, to require user to enter variables. The checkvar=xxx option tells super to prompt the user to enter the value of one or more variables (here, the variable xxx). For example, you might have a command `super shutdown' which halts the computer. If you execute this on the wrong host there may be some very annoyed users! The super.tab option checkvar=HOST may be helpful here; it causes super to prompt Super needs you to enter the HOST variable before proceeding. Enter HOST ( for reminder): If you press or the wrong value, super re-prompts with: Enter HOST (expecting `myhost'): This allows you to ensure that the caller really knows the host on which the command is executing -- a useful thing if the command will shutdown the system! Any super.tab variable can be used in this kind of check. Note that the value isn't anything like a secret; it's simply intended to help avoid gross embarrassment (or worse) by discouraging errors. E. New super.tab command, :getenv, to import environment variables. The :getenv command allows a super.tab file to import environment variables into super.tab variable definitions. The environment variables are not allowed unless the definition is restricted to super's normal set of "safe" characters. This provides two advantages: (a) it's a safe alternative to allowing users' environment variables to be passed unchecked to programs, because you can do: :getenv VAR1 VAR2 Cmd FullPath user~xyz setenv=VAR1=$VAR1,VAR2=$VAR2 ...and the program will receive VAR1 and VAR2 only if they have "safe" values, of reasonable length. (b) It allows interesting new constructs in super.tab files. F. Added owner=xxx and group=yyy options to the :include command. The use is :include FileName [owner=xxx] [group=yyy] This allows your per-user .supertab file to include files that are owned by some user xxx (owner=xxx) and/or are writable by group yyy (group=yyy). This can be useful for a collection of accounts that are operated together as a single "project" -- a variety of accounts can share .supertab files from the trusted user xxx or group yyy. Note: (1) The regular root-owned super.tab file can also use this construct, but it's not a good idea. Don't do it. (2) Beware of the transitive nature of this trust: the file owned by xxx can in turn include a file owned by yet another user. G. Added new builtin variables. The new variables are: i) HOST, the unqualified form of HOSTNAME. (Note that HOST and HOSTNAME will be the same if the system doesn't use qualified names for HOSTNAME.) ii) SUPER_OWNER, the owner of the top-level super.tab file. This is root for the default super.tab file, or the owner of the .supertab file in a per-user command. iii) SUPER_HOME, the home directory of $SUPER_OWNER. H. Added new global command ":die" to force immediate exit. The use is :die message The purpose is to allow a super.tab file to force an exit without resorting to syntactically clumsy methods. For example, you can use a line like this: :if $HOST != myhost :die "For use on myhost only; this is $HOST!" Without the :die command, one would have to write :global patterns=shell :if $HOST != myhost * /dev/null user~* die="For use on myhost only!" ...which is unnecessarily hard to read and write. I. A variety of bugfixes. These include: change to read password before super.tab uid=xxx causes uid to change to non-root; propagate -1 error return after canonicalize hostname failures; fixed generating of timestamp directory; fixed segfault occurring when printing wildcard commands w/o any "info". Patches from Rein Tollevik (Rein.Tollevik@si.sintef.no). J. Moved get_encrypted_passwd() to happen before super drops privs. This allows per-super .supertab files to use password-checking (from Geoffrey A. Lowney, Geoffrey.A.Lowney@Boeing.com) K. Modifications to handle HP-UX 10.20 running with tcb (Trusted Computing Base). Patches based on code from Minh Tran . ------------------- What's new for version 3.13.0 .. 3.13.5: These versions were never formally released. ------------------- What's new for version 3.12.2: A. Fixed configure script for AIX. Problem reported by Klaus Wacker (wacker@Physik.Uni-Dortmund.DE). B. Fixed error interpreting the argv0 option, and an error implementing it. The argv0 option was being incorrectly interpreted as an invalid arg[MMM-]NNN option. Problem reported by Hadmut Danisch (hadmut@danisch.de). C. Slightly improved help info. D. Slightly improved man page. E. Modifications to handle shadowed passwords properly on HP-UX 10.x and 11.x. F. Modifications to handle shadowed passwords properly on Linux. Problem report and bugfix from Edgar Nielsen . ------------------- What's new for version 3.12.1: A. Yet another buffer-overrun fix. Problem reported by root@sekure.org (http://www.sekure.org, aka the Brazilian Information Security Team). Super now has very strict option-checking, as follows: i) super now limits the length of each option passed to it (note that this is not the same as limiting the length of arguments passed to the commands invoked by super for the user); ii) super now limits the total length of all options passed to it (again, this is separate from limiting the length of arguments passed to commands invoked by super); iii) ensures that all its option characters are from a limited set. Items (i) and (ii) ensure that users can't pass execessively long strings. Item (iii) is just insurance :-) B. When super is running in debug mode, it won't execute any commands, but it will process user-supplied super.tab files. This makes potential security holes, because it might be possible that nasty data can be passed through a user-supplied super.tab file, just like there were buffer-overruns from command-line arguments. Therefore, super will no longer remain as root when checking a user-supplied super.tab file. Instead, it reverts to the caller's real uid, and prints a large explanatory message like the following: ** Since you have supplied a super.tab file that isn't the default, ** and your real uid isn't root, we're going to change back to your ** real uid for this test. That protects us against attacks via ** nasty constructions inside user-supplied super.tab files. ** Not that we don't trust you... ** Now using: ruid=545 euid=545 ** ------------------- What's new for version 3.12.0: A. This is supposed to be a nice and stable release, reflecting mainly the accumulated set of changes across 3.11. Those changes include not only patches but also enough new features that I changed the minor number to indicate that this now differs noticeably from 3.11.0. Changes from 3.11 include: i) the crucial buffer overrun patches; ii) various other bugfixes; iii) modifications to configure properly under more operating systems; iv) the following features, added since 3.11.0: --disable-rsyslog ...compile time switch. -U, -G, -M ...runtime switches for checking config files. syslog_error ...runtime configuration option. syslog_success ...runtime configuration option. argv0 ...runtime configuration option. B. Fix for a typo when checking the argument to the -U flag. Problem and fix from Benoit Speckel (Benoit.Speckel@IReS.in2p3.fr). C. Fix for insufficient setup when using the -U and -G options. Problem and fix from Gordon Lack (gml4410@ggr.co.uk). ------------------- What's new for version 3.11.9: A. Super was failing on per-user super commands (using the ~/.supertab file) because it tried to change supplementary groups after dropping root privs. Problem & fix from Gordon Lack (gml4410@ggr.co.uk). B. The new compile-time switch --disable-rsyslog turns off the use of the rsyslog() function, so that super only uses normal syslog(). rsyslog() has been improved to use gethostname() instead of "localhost" as a default. C. Bugfix: additional, new envvar checking had a bug that led to segfaults, because it passed a nil ptr to strlen(). Reported by swift@alum.mit.edu via the Debian bug-tracking system. D. New global options syslog_error and syslog_success for customizing syslog() output levels. By default, if logging to syslog is enabled, super logs errors at LOG_ERR and successful executions at LOG_INFO. The options syslog_error=xxx syslog_success=yyy set the error and success codes to xxx and yyy, respectively. Here, xxx and yyy are any of the usual syslog() priority and/or facility codes, e.g. syslog_error=LOG_ERR syslog_error=LOG_LOCAL2|LOG_ERR syslog_success="LOG_LOCAL7 | LOG_INFO" The LOG_xxx words can be separated by whitespace and/or "|". Super doesn't know what are sensible codes -- it's up to the super.tab writer to choose meaningful values. For instance, if you used the following (please don't!) syslog_success="LOG_LOCAL1 | LOG_LOCAL7 | LOG_INFO | LOG_ERR" then you will get all those values or'd together and passed to syslog(). E. Fixes for compiling under FreeBSD. The encryption buffer and salt buffer were extended to 256 bytes each -- plenty long under any current Unix, and hopefully for some time to come. From David O'Brien F. Patches for various glitches, such as using %ld instead of %d, %ld% instead of %ld, etc. From David O'Brien . ------------------- What's new for version 3.11.8: A. Fixed segfault that arose when handling certain combinations of globally- and locally-defined environment variables. Problem reported by Gordon Lack (gml4410@ggr.co.uk). ------------------- What's new for version 3.11.7: A. CRITICAL SECURITY FIXES: two separate buffer overruns allowed local root access. All versions between 3.9.6 and 3.11.6, inclusive, are affected. Buffer overrun #1 was reported by Gordon Lack (gml4410@ggr.co.uk); overrun #2 was reported by iss-xforce@iss.net. B. Patches for BSD Net/2. Contributed by David O'Brien . C. Related to (B), the prototyping macro __P() has been replaced by P__(), so that it will be legitimate on all conforming standard C implementations. D. Patches for Solaris 2.6. (I have become convinced that Sun has an engineer whose job title is something like Engineer in Charge of Modifying Standard Include Files So As To Ensure That Configure Scripts Will Break With Each Successive Solaris Release.) E. A few more minor modifications to the documentation (trying to make it easier to wade through). F. Some fixes for the Makefile's install and clean rules, from Martin Schulze (joey@Infodrom.North.DE) and Dmitry A. Fedorov (D.A.Fedorov@inp.nsk.su). G. Corrections to typo's in man pages, from Dmitry A. Fedorov (D.A.Fedorov@inp.nsk.su). H. Fix for the special per-user .supertab files: super was failing to parse user:commands properly. Fix from Terje Eggestad (Terje.Eggestad@novit.no). I. Fixed super so that it won't create a core file -- this is useful on systems w/ shadow passwords, to ensure that the shadow file contents aren't put into a core file. J. Added check for . This is needed for some versions of IRIX, which otherwise don't have FIOCLEX defined. K. New local option argv0. By default, super sets the first argument passed to a command (ie argv[0]) to be the Cmd string, not the path to the command. Thus "super doit" will set argv[0] to "doit", regardless of to the path being invoked. This will cause problems for programs that need a particular value of argv0. You can work around this by placing such programs into wrapper scripts that are in turn called from super, or you can use the local option argv0 to set the value of argv[0]: argv0=DesiredNameHere As a special case, "" means to use the fullpath by which super is invoking the command. For example, doit /Path/To/My/Prog argv0= will execute /Path/To/My/Prog with argv[0] set to "/Path/To/My/Prog". ------------------- What's new for version 3.11.6: A. SECURITY FIX: super -c or super -F xxx would check any file, e.g. /etc/shadow. This is now fixed by using access(2) to verify that the original caller has the right to read the specified file. Reported by Valentin Iliev . B. Bugfix: silly bugs in SAFE_PATH definition. C. added -U, -G, and -M options to support additional testing (-U uid means to act as if caller is user uid; -G gid means to act as if caller is group gid; -M mach means to act as if hostname==mach. Nothing is executed, but you can see what would have happened.) D. Added various patches from Martin Schulze (joey@infodrom.north.de), including documentation changes, Linux shadow password support, better hostname canonicalization. E. Bit more documentation. ------------------- What's new for version 3.11.5: A. Modified configure script, hsearch.c, localsys.h, and setuid.c so that super will auto-configure properly on AIX. ------------------- What's new for version 3.11.4: A. Fixed distribution: 3.11.3 didn't contain what it claimed. ------------------- What's new for version 3.11.3: A. Fixed configuration/compilation setup for Linux+glibc: - doesn't declare signal(); - defines _BSD_SOURCE. ------------------- What's new for version 3.11.2: A. Better debug information. Verbosity adjusted to make information presentation a little better. ------------------- What's new for version 3.11.1: A. New global option "lang" / bugfix. The "lang" global option lets you set the language used for daynames in time expressions to any locale available on your host, e.g. :global lang=de would typically cause super to use German names. This was a bugfix: super purported to support localization, but (a) it followed a non-POSIX implementation, and (b) it let the regular user specify the locale! B. Bugfix: super wasn't reporting enough information to users about execution being denied or requested command not existing. ------------------- What's new for version 3.11.0: A. NOTE WELL: The default locations for the super.tab and timestamps files have CHANGED, so that installation would work more smoothly with Gnu configure scripts: (a) super installs into the directory specified by configure --exec-prefix; the default is $PREFIX/bin. (b) super.tab installs into the directory specified by configure --sysconfdir; the default is $PREFIX/etc. (c) the timestamp directory is installed in the directory specified by configure --localstatedir; the default is $PREFIX/var; (c) the man pages are installed in subdirectories of configure --mandir; the default is $PREFIX/man. For example, if you use ./configure --prefix=/usr/local ...then the super executable will be /usr/local/bin/super, the super.tab file will be /usr/local/etc/super.tab, the timestamp directory will be /usr/local/var/superstamps, and the man pages into /usr/local/man/... B. New debug option: The option "-F path-to-superfile" is an extremely useful debug option. It lets you specify the super.tab file. For security, no command will ever be executed. If used with a commandname, the matched command will be shown but not other debug info. It lets you test an entry for a super.tab file without actually installing the file: super [-d | -D] -F my_new_super.tab some-command C. New debug option: The option "-T timeofday" is another useful debug option. It tells super to act as if the time of execution is timeofday, where timeofday has the format hh:mm/dayname (using the same daynames as are accepted in the super.tab file). For security, no command will ever be executed. This lets you test if a time condition is properly limiting execution of a command: super -d -F my_new_super.tab -T hh:mm/day some-command D. New builtin command: :if aaa op bbb rest-of-line provides limited conditional support. Here, aaa and bbb are strings (can be variables), op is one of "==" (equals), "!=" (does not equal), "~" (glob matches), "!~" (does not glob-match), and the rest-of-line is evaluated if and only if the expression is true. Examples: :if $UNAME_MACHINE ~ sun4* :include MySunSpecificFile ...includes MySunSpecificFile on Sun4-type machines only; :if $UNAME_MACHINE ~ sun4* \ :if $UNAME_MACHINE != sun4c :include MySunSpecificFile ...includes MySunSpecificFile on Sun4-type machines only, excluding Sun4c machines. E. New builtin command: :optinclude filename is like the :include command, except that if filename is missing, it's silently ignored. If you use this, be SURE not to write later super.tab entries that depend on the presence of the file. (I do _not_ recommend using :optinclude, because you won't be informed if you make a sysadmin error, and delete one of the include files.) F. New builtin variables: The following variables are automatically defined, so that you can use them in :if lines (or anywhere else, of course). Examples: :if $SI_ARCHITECTURE != alpha :include SomeFile :include super.tab.$NIS_DOMAIN Items that are unavailable on your system are set to "". (Items may be unavailable because your system doesn't offer the required function, or because your system's function doesn't support all the specific items super tries to get.) (a) From gethostname() or sysinfo(): HOSTNAME system's hostname. Depending on super's configuration, the hostname returned by the function may be modified if super attempts to canonicalize the name. (Use super -b to print the names and values of all builtin variables.) (b) From getdomainname(): NIS_DOMAIN The domain set for NIS purposes; it is not necessarily an Internet domain. (c) From the sysinfo() function: SI_SYSNAME name of operating system SI_HOSTNAME name of node SI_RELEASE release of operating system SI_VERSION version field of utsname SI_MACHINE kind of machine SI_ARCHITECTURE instruction set arch SI_HW_SERIAL hardware serial number SI_HW_PROVIDER hardware manufacturer SI_SRPC_DOMAIN secure RPC domain (d) From the uname() function: UNAME_SYSNAME Operating system name. UNAME_NODENAME The nodename. UNAME_RELEASE Operating system release. UNAME_VERSION Operating system version. UNAME_MACHINE Machine hardware name (class). G. New command-line option: The -b option prints out the builtin variables, then exits. This makes it easy to see what variable values to check for in :if lines: % super -b Builtin variables: UNAME_SYSNAME: SunOS UNAME_VERSION: 2 ... H. Added -I. to Makefile so that compilation would succeed under VPATH. I. Added env=... to be a global option as well as a local option. J. Added maxenvlen=nnn to be a global or local option; gives the maximum allowed length of an envvar definition. Default=1000. Negative=no limit. K. Pretty-printing: improved the formatting under super -d and super -H. L. Added option maxlen=[mmm,]nnn (local or global). Arguments are restricted to be a maximum of mmm characters long individually (including trailing null), and nnn characters total. The default limits are 1000 and 10000, respectively. Values < 0 mean no limits; unlimited argument length can be configured using: :global maxlen=-1,-1 M. Fixed missing initializations for some flags when super is invoked from a symlink. Reported by Jeff W. Stewart (jws@anaconda.cc.purdue.edu). N. Fixed SAFE_PATH initialization. Reported by Lawrence Lowe (lsl@hep.ph.bham.ac.uk) and Gordon Lack (gml4410@ggr.co.uk). O. Bugfix: if the nice increment was set to a negative value, and the program was to be run non-setuid-root, the nice increment was changed to be applied _before_ the setuid/setgid operations. (Negative nice increments can't be except while running as root, of course.) P. Bugfix: fixed envvar setting so that HOME, USER, and LOGNAME are set correctly when uid=NNN or u_g=NNN are numeric. For example, uid=0 had caused the USER envvar to be "0". Q. Bugfix: super -D core dumped. Reason: super was passing an integer to a debug message, at a place where a string was expected. (Reported by swift@alum.mit.edu.) R. Tried to make man pages, especially the super.1 page, more clear. S. Changed the -h option to only give a usage listing. Thus super -h ...usage super (no args) ...list available commands, tersely. super -H ...list available commands, expansively. ------------------- What's new for version 3.10.0b6: A. Instead of closing descriptors >2 right away, the close-on-exec flag is instead used for machines with this feature. For IRIX 5 (and others?), this is a bugfix, not just a general improvement: Gordon Lack wrote ``Irix NIS seems to "cache" a UDP connexion on a file-descriptor, and super closes this before execing''. Bugfix/improvement courtesy of Gordon Lack (gml4410@ggr.co.uk). ------------------- What's new for version 3.10.0: ** If you are familiar with super version <=3.7.2, but haven't used ** a more recent version, please read the changelist back through 3.8.0! ** There have been MANY enhancements since 3.7.2. A. EASIER INSTALLATION: configuration is now handled by a configure script. This reduces the number of items you have to hand-adjust from 20 to none at all (if you like the defaults). B. SECURITY FIX: Until version 3.9.7, super never did anything to change the supplementary groups list. This is not a security problem if you are adding privileges (such as switching to root), but it is a potential problem if you are switching to a different user and/or a different group. Solution: this version of super adds the following new semantics: If you use u+g=foo, then the user is set to foo and the group is set to foo's login group (as in earlier versions), and the supplementary groups are set to foo's supplementary groups list (new feature). Otherwise, the supplementary groups list is deleted. See also the new options groups=a,b,... and addgroups=a,b,... The problem was reported and a workaround supplied by Morten Rolland (Morten.Rolland@si.sintef.no). C. BUGFIX: Super had assumed that there would only be one ":global_option" line. If there were multiple :global_option instances, and logfile=xxx was used before the last :global_option instance, super would create multiple logging processes. Worse, interactions with password checking could lead to super's running a command without getting the user's password (when password=y). The bug was reported by Richard Czech (Richard.Czech@gmd.de) D. PER-USER SUPER.TAB FILES: Super now allows ordinary users to supply their own super.tab files. This lets users give well-controlled setuid/setgid access to their programs: the user who offers the program gets the assurance of safe IFS settings, safe environment variable settings, etc; and the user who executes the program knows that it will execute under the uid of the offering user. o The user-supplied super file is .supertab, in the home directory of the user, and must be owned and writable only by the owner. o Joe user's supplied command "foo" is invoked by typing super joe:foo Super will act as follows: i. immediately changes its uid, gid, and supplementary groups to be those of the owner of the super.tab file (joe); ii. close all descriptors except for stdin, stdout, and stderr; iii. follow its usual rules for processing super.tab files, except that any options that require setuid() or setgid() will fail since super is running as an ordinary user. E. EASIER LISTS: in the past, super permitted csh-style brace-expansion for valid-user patterns. It has also allowed comma-separated lists for some options (e.g. fd=n1,n2,...). These forms have been synthesized into a single format: anywhere a list makes sense, either comma-separated or brace-expansion is permitted. (The implementation is easy: the list is wrapped in braces, and then brace-expansion is done.) F. NEW OPTION groups=a,b,... supplementary group list is a,b,c groups= supplementary group list is empty causes super to set the supplementary groups to the named list, before exec'ing the command. G. NEW OPTION addgroups=a,b,... causes super to add the named groups to the supplementary set before exec'ing the command. (Note: the supplementary set is intialized to be empty unless the option u+g=foo is used, so addgroups=a,b,... usually has the same affect as groups=a,b,... Alternatively, groups= addgroups=a,b,... will set the groups' to the caller's login groups, then add a,b,... to the list.) H. NEW OPTION cd=SomePath causes super to change directory to SomePath before executing the command. This can be global or local; the local overrides the global setting. I. NEW OPTION rlog_host=hostname tells super which host's syslog daemon is to receive log messages when option syslog=y is enabled. Default=localhost. J. NEW OPTION gethostbyname=y|n tells super to enable/disable hostname lookup using gethostbyname(). Default: enabled (if you have gethostbyname()). K. CHANGE TO NETGROUP HANDLING: hostnames beginning with ``+'' are _always_ treated as NIS netgroup names -- that is, @+xyz means that anyone at a host in netgroup xyz can execute the command. If your system doesn't have innetgr(), patterns beginning with ``+'' will not ever match any hostname. (Previously, interpreting ``+'' as a special character was enabled as compile-time option.) L. CHANGE TO GETHOSTBYNAME() USAGE: if you have gethostbyname(), it gets compiled in and will be enabled by default; use global option gethostbyname=n to disable. (Previously, you had to define USE_GETHOSTBYNAME to compile it in, and there was no switch to turn it off.) M. CHANGE TO SYSLOG() USAGE: we always compile the rsyslog() function from Jean-luc Szpyrka, so you can always send syslog output to either a remote or local host. The new option rlog_host=xxxxx specifies the host that receives the messages; the default is "localhost" -- i.e. same behavior as plain syslog(). (Previously, neither syslog() nor rsyslog() use was compiled in unless USE_SYSLOG was defined.) N. SPECIAL NAMES: Two name have been added that you can use as an argument to any of the options owner=xxx, uid=xxx, gid=xxx, u+g=xxx, groups=xxx, addgroups=xxx, umask=xxx. These names are means owner of the file to be executed (or owner's group, whichever is appropriate in the context); means the owner or group of the user calling super. The angle brackets are literally part of the name. (Exception: umask= makes no sense and isn't defined.) Example: gid=Foo uid= would change the group only, but leave the uid unchanged -- this is something you could not formerly do in super. O. Updated man pages. P. Security enhancement: the default umask is no longer inherited from the caller; instead it is set to 022. However, you can set it to the caller's umask by using the option umask= Q. Dead code elimination: a branch of code made a call to the unsafe (on some systems) function getlogin(). This branch of code was never invoked, and has now been completely eliminated. ------------------- What's new for version 3.9.7: A. Super 3.9.6 installed the "setuid" program as setuid-root. This is a severe security hole. Version 3.9.7 removes the setuid-root entry from the Makefile. ------------------- What's new for version 3.9.6: A. Important bugfix for version 3.9. Super had its internal structure overhauled for version 3.9. Unfortunately, one important error was introduced: the super.tab options uid=xxx group=xxx u_g=xxx were not properly reset from one entry to the next. This version fixes that error. B. A new -c option: causes super to check the syntax of a super.tab file, but not actually execute anything. Its use: super -c [superfile] When you modify a super.tab file, you should use super -c to check the file's overall syntax, and also use super -d cmd for each modified command cmd, to verify that the details of the invoked command (args, uid, gid, umask, etc) are what you wanted to do. C. A new -f option: this is a "just the facts, ma'm" help mode: it prints lines like: CmdPattern FullPath [leading args] CmdPattern FullPath [leading args] ... which allows scripts to make lists of commands the user may execute. D. A new super.tab option has been added: print="msg" causes the message to be printed just before exec'ing the command. E. Better man page information. F. Replaced DIE=msg with die=msg. (Retaining DIE=msg as obsolete form.) ------------------- What's new for version 3.9.5: A. Patches to 3.9 for Digital UNIX, from Stephen Carney (carney@gvc.dec.com). ------------------- What's new for version 3.9.4: A. Bugfix for yet another silly error if invoked via symlink in version 3.9.2. Error pointed out and fixed by Rein Tollevik (Rein.Tollevik@si.sintef.no). B. Syslog messages were always logged at priority SYSLOG_PRIORITY. Error found and fixed by Rein Tollevik (Rein.Tollevik@si.sintef.no). C. If the preprocessor symbol SUNOS5 is defined, then the symbol SVR4 is also defined (if not already done) in super.h. One ifdef'd section of code was changed to look at SVR4 instead of SUNOS5; hopefully this will be an improvement for other SVR4-based systems. ------------------- What's new for version 3.9.3: A. Wrong processing if invoked without any arguments, or if invoked via symlink. Error pointed out and initial fix by Gerry Singleton (Gerry.Singleton@Canada.Sun.COM). ------------------- What's new for version 3.9.2: A. Makefile entries and a few #includes needed for TI SYS V 3.3, from Oyvind Gjerstad (ogj@it.tollpost.no). ------------------- What's new for version 3.9.1: A. Left some commas out of an #ifdef'd initialization array. Bugfix from Oyvind Gjerstad (ogj@it.tollpost.no). B. Fixed: variable expansion happening inside comments, reported by Oyvind Gjerstad (ogj@it.tollpost.no). ------------------- What's new for version 3.9.0: ** If you are familiar with super version <=3.7.2, make sure you ** ** read the changes in 3.8.0! There have been MANY enhancements ** ** made since 3.7.2. ** This version consolidates all of the changes done in beta tests of 3.8, and added enough new items that I had to change the version number to 3.9 (without pausing for a non-beta version of 3.8). The improvements have come thick and fast, but that will now stop and only corrections will be done to v3.9 for some time to come. The visible changes are: A. The super.tab control line format has been generalized. The old syntax and semantics remain a valid subset -- old super.tab files will continue to work as expected. Super now takes the following approach to selecting a command to execute. For each control line in the super.tab file, super requires that: 1. The user's typed command must match a control-line command; 2. The user's name/group/host must match one of the user/group/host entries; 3. The current time and day must match a time entry (if any are given); Otherwise, super "falls through" and tries the next control line. The user/group/host and time entries are called _conditions_ that must be matched. _Options_ on the control line are handled very differently from _conditions_. After conditions are met and a line is nominally selected for execution, all options must be satisfied, or super quits without executing the command and without trying further control lines in the super.tab file. This distinction between conditions and options is easy to use in practice: basically, super searches for a line that matches a command, user and time of day. When the line is found, super will execute the command if the options -- such as a required password or restrictions on command arguments -- are satisfied; otherwise, it stops. There are three important differences between conditions and options. 1. If conditions aren't matched, super will "fall through" and look at the next line. In contrast, when options are checked, super will quit if the options aren't satisfied. 2. Conditions can be "negated", that is, !condition~pattern means that if the pattern is matched, the user is _rejected_ from using this line. Options can't be negated. 3. Many similar conditions be applied, and the last-matching condition is used. For example, the list of user-conditions :develop !joeblow says that anybody in group "develop" can use the command, but then rejects joeblow, even if he is in the develop group. If an option can appear more than once on a line, all instances of the option must be satisfied, not just the last-matching instance. As part of the syntax generalization, user patterns may now begin with "user~": user~:develop !user~joeblow Options and conditions can be interleaved. B. time~pat is a new condition that has to be met before the line is accepted for execution. See next item for sample uses. All time patterns on a line must be matched or super will continue to the next control line. For example, time~{8:00-12:00,13:00-17:00} !time~{sat,sun} or time~{8:00-12:00,13:00-17:00}/{mon,tue,wed,thu,fri} restricts a command to being used during typical office hours on weekdays. C. DIE=msg is a new option that can be used in a command line to force super to exit (and print msg) if the rest of the command line is successfully matched. Here are a few examples that also illustrate use of the new :define command. :define RestrictedCommands ... :define weekdays {mon,tues,wed,thurs,fri} :define BadHours time~0-08:30/$weekdays \ time~17:30-24:00/$weekdays \ time~{sat,sun} $RestrictedCommands $BadHours \ DIE="You can't use this command outside of office hours." or :define RestrictedCommands ... :define officeHours {8:30-12:30,1:30-17:30}/{mo,tu,we,th,fr} $RestrictedCommands !time~$officeHours DIE="hahaha" Without the DIE option, super will try to execute the restricted commands during the restricted hours. D. gethostbyname() is now called both with and without a trailing dot in the hostname. If both forms succeed, the longer returned name is kept, except that any trailing dot is deleted. E. nice=nnn changes the ``nice'' level of the executed command by an amount nnn from the default level. (Positive increments reduce the command's priority; negative increments increase it.) F. umask=nnn (local or global option) makes commands run with the specified umask. Useful if you want to help ensure that files are created with restricted access permissions. G. :include filename allows a super.tab file to include other files. The filename must either be an absolute path or is interpreted relative to the directory containing the super.tab file, and the same restrictions are put on the file ownership and permissions as for the top-level super.tab file. The number of nested includes is limited only by the number of allowed open files. Use with caution! H. The new local option argMMM-NNN=SSS or argNNN=SSS (where MMM and NNN are positive integers, and SSS is a string) means that the MMM-NNN'th user-entered arguments must match pattern SSS. The pattern SSS must be enclosed in quotes if it contains whitespace. Note that this doesn't _require_ MMM-NNN arguments; it only says what those arguments must look like, if entered. I. Updated and corrected super.5 man page. J. Fixed "mail" option. It can be used as either a global or local option. ------------------- What's new for version 3.8.0: (The first 5 items are substantive visible changes/enhancements! Please read them!) A. The rule for processing backslash-newline-whitespace (indicating continued lines) IS MODIFIED. THE NEW RULE IS: - if it follows a letter, digit, or underscore, replace the sequence with a single space. - otherwise, it is eliminated entirely. Therefore, you can type Cmd File user1\ user2\ user3 and it is equivalent to Cmd File user1 user2 user3 But typing Cmd File {user1,\ user2,\ user3} is equivalent to Cmd File {user1,user2,user3} B. Variables are now supported! You can type :define okusers {joe,jane,tom,sally} The above could also have been written :define okusers {joe,\ jane,\ tom,\ sally} and then use Cmd FullPath $okusers with the obvious result. (The variable name may be enclosed in parentheses to insulate it from the characters which follow.) Read the man page super.5 before proceeding to use variables! C. New global option syntax: :global globaloptions... or :global_options globaloptions... The old syntax: / / globaloptions is still supported, but its use is discouraged. D. Multiple commands/filenames are now allowed on one line. Now you can type Cmd1::FullPath1 Cmd2::FullPath2 [...] ok-user-pats This can be useful for treating a group of commands as a unit: :define Common_cmds Cmd1::FullPath1 \ Cmd2::FullPath2 \ Cmd3::FullPath3 :define okusers {\ :operators,\ joe,jane,tom,sally} $Common_cmds $okusers E. In general, a colon in a Cmd part of a line is now reserved to super, and must not be used as part of the Cmd name. This has been done to support the :define and :global commands, the Cmd::File syntax, and provide space for future development. F. The super.tab file can now be owned by root or nobody. This change is to support networked accounts. G. Substantial modifications to hostname matching to improve handling of netgroups. (From Steve Robbins -- steve@cim.mcgill.ca) H. Added Makefile entry Max + header #ifdef's for SGI v5.3 (from Max Buchheit, buchheit@ccrs.emr.ca). I. Fixed comparison between char and NULL. Added Makefile adjustments for Solaris 2.4 (SunOS 5.4). J. Fixed an error related to an appended dot on hostnames. (from Geoffrey A. Lowney, Geoffrey.A.Lowney@Boeing.com) K. If compiled with __STDC__ defined, prototypes are used. L. Disabled "mail" global option. Nobody was using it, and it wasn't implemented right anyway... maybe that's why nobody used it :-). M. Disallowed relative pathnames unless global option relative_path is set. This is to prevent admins from accidentally making a stupid error. N. Disallowed slash in groupnames unless global option group_slash is set. This lets us find formatting errors more easily -- namely, using Cmd:File instead of Cmd::File. ------------------- What's new for version 3.7.4: A. Added setenv=var=xxx option. This option defines environment variable var to have value xxx, and adds it to the environment variables that are kept when the command is executed. Can be used multiple times to add definitions for multiple variables. Note that "setenv=DISPLAY" is syntactically invalid (missing the `=' after the variable name), and that "setenv=DISPLAY=" sets DISPLAY to the null string. (Recall that you can also use the option "env=var1,var2,..." to keep a list of user-defined environment variables.) B. Improved error reporting. ------------------- What's new for version 3.7.3: A. *** NOTE WELL *** Changed processing of FullPathNames with quoted arguments: the quotes are now stripped (it was an error that they weren't). For example, the super.tab entry doit "/usr/bin/xxx -o1 -o2 -xrm 'a b c'" willie allows user willie to type super doit and to execute /usr/bin/xxx with arglist argv[0]: doit argv[1]: -o1 argv[2]: -o2 argv[3]: -xrm argv[4]: a b c Previous versions of super would pass argv[4] as 'a b c', including the single quotes. B. Added #ifdef to define LOG_USER and LOG_ERR if they aren't defined in . C. When logging successful super uses, added #ifdef so that the message priority isn't set unless USE_SYSLOG is defined. D. Added Makefile entry for Ultrix 4.3 (from Christoph Geelen, geelen@rzulx1.mpie-duesseldorf.mpg.de). E. Added Makefile entry for UnixWare 2.0 (from Pete Holsberg, pjh@tecoma.mccc.edu). F. Added Makefile entry and super.c patches for Digital UNIX V3.2 (formerly DEC OSF/1); from Stephen Carney, carney@gvc.dec.com. ------------------- What's new for version 3.7.2: A. Added owner=xxx option so that super won't run a program unless it's owned by xxx. ------------------- What's new for version 3.7.1: A. Modified error msg for clarity. B. If super.tab isn't owned by root, then: + if real uid is root, bail out: don't run at all. + if real uid isn't root, run as real uid (can be useful for testing). ------------------- What's new for version 3.7.0: A. Changed hostname comparisons to be case-insensitive. (From Steve Robbins -- steve@cim.mcgill.ca) B. New capability: wildcard commands. In previous versions of super, entries in the super.tab file looked like: CmdName FullPathName PermittedUsers This is now supplanted by a new format, which is a superset of the previous one (note that all existing super.tab files remain valid): CmdPattern FullPathName-with-optional-"*" PermittedUsers There are two new features here: 1) The former CmdName string is now interpreted as a pattern (with csh-style brace expansion, so that it can actually stand for a variety of commands). 2) If there is an asterisk in FullPathName, it is replaced by the user's cmd. In the usual situation, in which CmdPattern is still just a plain name without wildcards, the user (a) types "super cmd"; (b) the cmd is matched against CmdPattern; (c) the user checked to be a PermittedUser, etc; (d) FullPathName is then executed. As long as CmdPattern is just made up of letters, digits, and underscore, and FullPathName has no asterisk, the effect will be exactly as super has always acted. If you put special pattern-matching characters into the CmdPattern, you simply give more ways a user can execute the same FullPathName. This isn't yet very exciting, and in fact isn't a good idea at all. The power of using patterns in the CmdPattern string comes when FullPathName includes an asterisk. In that case, the asterisk is replaced with the user's "cmd" string to form the actual command to exec. For instance, a SysV-based host might have an entry in the super.tab file that looks like: /usr/bin/{lp,lpstat,disable,enable,cancel} * :operators This would allow anybody in the "operators" group to have root access to the line printer commands. For instance, if the user typed: super /usr/bin/disable some_printer then the FullPathName == "*" would be replaced by /usr/bin/disable, and become the command to exec. More conveniently, the super.tab file could have a line like: {lp,lpstat,disable,enable,cancel} /usr/bin/* :operators In this case, the user can type super disable some_printer The asterisk is replaced by "disable" to form the command /usr/bin/disable. If you _completely_ trust some users, but want logging of all actions, you could use: /* * ReallyReallyTrustedUsers (if the global option patterns=shell has been set) or /.* * ReallyReallyTrustedUsers (the default case: patterns=regex). The user can now execute any command. Note that the pattern begins with a slash, to ensure that the cmd must be an absolute path -- this helps avoid accidental execs of the wrong program. Of course, if you were really going to give everything away as shown above, you'd probably want to exclude any public-area workstations, require the trusted users to periodically give their passwords, and set the real uid=root (instead of just the effective uid), so the entry might be modified to read: /* * TrustedUsers !{PatternsOfPublicWorstations} \ password=y timeout=5 uid=0 (if the global option patterns=shell has been set). (These changes were inspired by Aaron Schuman, schuman@sgi.com) ------------------- What's new for version 3.6.1: A. Added support for shadow passwords on HP-UX 9.x. ------------------- What's new for version 3.6.0: A. Changed super's logging to offer networked syslog messages: all syslog messages can be sent to a single host. B. Provided bugfix with -V option (super could coredump otherwise). (These changes provided by Jean-luc Szpyrka, jls@sophia.inria.fr) ------------------- What's new for version 3.5.2: A. Bugfix: the full path of the executed command was inserted as argv[1] in the output arguments, when it didn't belong there at all. B. Bugfix: log messages for _successful_ commands weren't being newline-terminated. (These bugs reported by Olof Backing, obg@nada.kth.se) ------------------- What's new for version 3.5.1: A. Added better copyright + licensing info. B. Did some code cleanup (getting rid of unused variables, adding declaration of wait(), etc). C. After logging a super call to the logfile, failed exec's might not be printed on the screen (although they were logged in the logfile). ------------------- What's new for version 3.5: A. Added pattern negation to super.tab: !pat says to disallow a user who matches the pattern. Until now, you could only give permission to users that matched, not take it away. Patterns are scanned left-to-right, and the allow/disallow depends on the last pattern that matches. This lets you do things like cmd /Full/Path :goodguys !jan to mean allow anybody in group goodguys, but then disallows user jan, even if jan is in goodguys. B. Added user/group/host patterns to the global settings: / / [global opts] pat pat ... <> pat pat ... User/group/host patterns to the left of "<>" are processed _before_ the per-command patterns; user/group/host patterns to the right of "<>" are processed _after_ the per-command patterns. If "<>" is missing, all patterns are processed after the user patterns. For example, / / jan <> !@+badhosts says that user jan can execute any command (unless a per-command pattern explicitly disallows jan from executing a particular command), but under no circumstances will a user on any host in netgroup ``badhosts'' be allowed to execute any command. (Thus jan can execute any command, but only from hosts _not_ in ``badhosts''.) (These changes were inspired by Jean-luc Szpyrka, jls@sophia.inria.fr .) C. Added special handling of hostnames: If a host is using DNS names, and the hostname isn't matched in the super.tab file, it's possible that the reason is simply that gethostname() returns a name with fewer or more components of the fully-qualified domain name (fqdn) than is in the hostname pattern in super.tab. For example, gethostname() might return "w.x.y.z", but the hostname pattern might be simply "w". Until now, super wouldn't consider this a successful match. If you enable the new feature USE_GETHOSTBYNAME, then if the hostname doesn't match the pattern directly, super will determine the fqdn, and then compare ever-shorter parts against the pattern. For instance, given the hostname "ab.cd.ef.gh", super will test "ab.cd.ef.gh", then "ab.cd.ef", then "ab.cd", and finally "ab". Warning: using this option may reduce security a bit - your host may query a nameserver on another host to obtain the FQDN, and that nameserver could conceivably have been subverted and then return incorrect hostnames. (Idea from Dave Curry, davy@ecn.purdue.edu). D. Fixed a bug in creating timestamp files. Basically, unless the global option timestampuid=0 was set, one frequently got a message "Timestamp creation failed" and then couldn't run a command requiring a password. (Bug reported by Brian Huntley, bhuntley%tsegw.tse.com@spectre.uunet.ca) E. Changed super's logging to include the arguments passed to the command. (Patch from Dave Curry, davy@ecn.purdue.edu). F. An error in the str_val() function allowed some typos in option names to pass unnoticed. Files with properly typed option names were not affected. G. Modified some error messages that were not printing accurate information about why access was being denied. H. Bugfix: comments in super.tab are supposed to only go up to newline, but instead they ran to the end of an input block. I. Ported to SCO 3.2v4. (Changes from Keith Menard, menard@gateway.wtc.com) J. Fixed error in processing backslashes in super.tab lines (backslash-newline was being processed correctly; others left super in an infinite loop). K. Stripped down the strqtok function that splits input lines of text. ------------------- What's new for version 3.4.9: A. Added #ifdef's and Makefile entries for Clix 3.1 r.7.1.3 (Intergraph) contributed by David Sandmann (das@ipro15.aaa.com). B. Added #ifdef'd code to implement scripts that start with "#! interpreter" on OS's which don't support it directly. ------------------- What's new for version 3.4.8: Minor bugfixes: A. _Successful_ executions of commands were not being logged by syslog unless they were also being logged to a (non-syslog) file. B. There were formatting errors and other minor mistakes in the super.5 man page. C. Changed the example in README and the super.1 man page regarding how a program can super itself, so that it will work on all Bourne shell variations (the argument to "test" had to be protected against empty strings.) ------------------- What's new for version 3.4.7: A. Bugfix for patterns like uuu:ggg and uuu: ...valid user is denied access. Bug report & fix came from Karen L Dickerson (kld@mudshark.sunquest.com). ------------------- What's new for version 3.4.6: A. Bugfix for sites that don't compile with USE_NETGROUP but do specify a hostname. Bug reported by Adam P. Harris (apharris@mcs.com). ------------------- What's new for version 3.4.5: A. Improved parsing for arguments that super supplies to commands. Previously, only whitespace would separate arguments. Version 3.4.5 parses the FullPathName with recognition of embedded quotes and backslashes. For example, suppose the super.tab file contains a line like cmd "FullPath -a -b 2\ 3 -xrm 'r s t \ u v w' ..." SuperOptions... validusers... The "FullPath..." string (containing the arguments -a, -b, ...) ... is parsed using Bourne-shell-like rules for backslashes and quotes, and the line is parsed as argv[0] FullPath argv[1] -a argv[2] -b argv[3] 2 3 argv[4] -xrm argv[5] r s t u v w (Use "super -d cmd" to check that your args are being parsed as expected before you unleash a new command on your users.) ------------------- What's new for version 3.4.4: A. The timestamp file of user@host.name.dom is now by default stored in TIMESTAMP_DIR/hostname/user with the old behavior (TIMESTAMP_DIR/user) being an option controlled with global option timestampbyhost=y|n. The timestampuid=xxx option has been added to allow timestamp files to be created under a particular uid. This allows for a cross-mounted timestamp directory on hosts that map NFS root accesses to nobody, but still keeps the password entries distinct on different hosts. B. TIMESTAMP_DIR is now documented in the Makefile, so that it is easily configured at compile time. ------------------- What's new for version 3.4.3: A. Option -H has been added to give the long-winded help information that has been the only thing printed until now. The -h option now prints a short help listing: Command Comments ------- -------- cmd1 help info for cmd1 cmd2 help info for cmd2 ... ------------------- What's new for version 3.4.2: A. If "xyz" is a symlink to super, then % xyz args... is treated by super just like % super xyz args... Super detects such symlinks by the rule that argv[0] must match "*/super" or "super"; otherwise, it's assumed to be a symlink. Therefore, a symlink named "super" won't work -- super won't recognize it's being invoked via symlink. ------------------- What's new for version 3.4.1: A. When printing debug info, there was misformatted output of any extra file descriptors being held open. (The problem only occurred in 3.4.0, not earlier versions.) ------------------- What's new for version 3.4: A. Added nargs=[mmm-]nnn to limit user-entered args. ------------------- What's new for version 3.3.2: A. Allow "@hostname", without any user or groupname part. ------------------- What's new for version 3.3.1: A. Fixed SunOS 5.x to use "getspnam()" when looking up passwords. ------------------- What's new for version 3.3: A. Added mail="....." global option. B. Fixed goofy error in parsing password=n. C. Added syslog=y|n option. ------------------- What's new for version 3.2: A. Added options password=y|n, timeout=n, renewtime=y|n to require passwords on specific commands (or all commands). B. A bugfix: if the super.tab file tried to pass options to the executable command, the exec would fail. ------------------- What's new for version 3.1: A. Added global option loguid=xxx to allow the logfile to be opened under a uid other than root. This allows the logfile to be shared across a network over which root doesn't have write access. ------------------- What's new for version 3.0: A. Command logging -- you can specify a file to receive a log of super uses and attempts. B. More environment variables -- for each entry, the super.tab file can specify environment variables that should be passed to the command instead of discarded. You simply add entries like env=TZ,TAPE to the super.tab file, to keep TZ and TAPE in addition to the default list. Of course one has to use this with caution. C. Set uid/gid -- for each entry, the super.tab file can specify the uid and/or gid (the default is to only change the effective uid to root). To use this, you add entries like uid=xxx gid=yyy to the super.tab file, or u+g=xxx to set the uid to xxx and the gid to xxx's login gid. As a supplement to the setuid/setgid ability, super defines some extra environment variables so that the invoked command can know the username and home directory of the user who invoked the command, as well as that of the uid under which the command is executing. D. Open file descriptors -- for each entry, the super.tab file can specify a list of file descriptors that should not be closed (in addition to the default 0,1,2). E. Initial arguments -- for each entry, the super.tab file can specify a set of initial arguments that are put into argv[] ahead of the arguments the user typed on the command line. F. super -h now only prints the commands that may be executed by the user; and the super.tab file can specify a line of explanatory text to be printed with each command. G. A bugfix: The TERM environment variable can now contain "-+_.:/" in addition to [a-zA-Z0-9]. H. The super.tab file can be configured with either Bourne-shell style or regex (ed-style) valid-user patterns; the default is regex. ------------------- What's new for version 2.0: A. A couple of bugfixes. (These fixes were first introduced in version 1.2.) B. You can restrict commands to particular users on particular hosts. This allows one "super.tab" file to serve many hosts. C. Entries in "super.tab" can now span multiple lines. Helpful when one file serves many users + hosts. D. csh-style brace-expansion: super's pattern-matching previously was done with the BSD 4.x regex routines. This is now extended allow csh-style braces. For instance, to allow users pam and sammy, executing from hosts alpha and beta, you can use an entry like {pam,sammy}@{alpha,beta}