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Emacs movemail Privilege Escalation

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Emacs movemail Privilege Escalation

Disclosed
08/01/1986
Created
03/19/2019

Description

This module exploits a SUID installation of the Emacs movemail utility to run a command as root by writing to 4.3BSD's /usr/lib/crontab.local. The vulnerability is documented in Cliff Stoll's book The Cuckoo's Egg.

Author(s)

  • Markus Hess
  • Cliff Stoll
  • wvu <wvu@metasploit.com>

Platform

Unix

Architectures

cmd

Development

Module Options

To display the available options, load the module within the Metasploit console and run the commands 'show options' or 'show advanced':

msf > use exploit/unix/local/emacs_movemail
msf exploit(emacs_movemail) > show targets
    ...targets...
msf exploit(emacs_movemail) > set TARGET < target-id >
msf exploit(emacs_movemail) > show options
    ...show and set options...
msf exploit(emacs_movemail) > exploit

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