All users are defined in the /etc/passwd file with lines like such:

.-- user name         .-- full name   .--- home directory  
|                     |               |
v                     v               v
aviv:x:35001:10120:Adam Aviv {}:/home/scs/aviv:/bin/bash
        ^     ^                                   ^
uid ----'     '--- gid (Default)                  '--- default shell

This is my passwd entry. It stores my user name, my user id, my default group id, my full name, my home directory, and my default shell. Every user has a unique username, user id, and default group; however, a user can be assigned to multiple groups. Group information is fined in the /etc/group directory, and here is entry for my default group:

.-- group name
|            
v            
scs:*:10120:webadmin,www-data,lucas,slack
       ^    \___________________________/
gid ---'                |
                        '- Additional users in that group

From the command line, the tool id will print this information, as well as groups

aviv@saddleback: ~ $ id
uid=35001(aviv) gid=10120(scs) groups=10120(scs),27(sudo),15000(mids)
aviv@saddleback: ~ $ groups
scs sudo mids

One thing you might notice is that I am in the sudo group … on this computer, at least. We'll come back to this later.

Access to files are permission-ed based on the user and group designation of the accessing agent. Typically, this is a user, but the same designations are assigned to running processes. The permissions of a file can be observed using ls -l or stat:

aviv@saddleback: demo $ ls -l
total 4
-rwxr--r-- 1 aviv scs    0 Mar 27 09:41 a
-rw--wx--- 1 aviv scs    0 Mar 27 09:41 b
-------rwx 1 aviv scs    0 Mar 27 09:41 c
drwxr-x--- 2 aviv scs 4096 Mar 27 09:41 d
aviv@saddleback: demo $ stat b
  File: ‘b’
  Size: 0         	Blocks: 0          IO Block: 524288 regular empty file
Device: 1ch/28d	Inode: 34996239    Links: 1
Access: (0630/-rw--wx---)  Uid: (35001/    aviv)   Gid: (10120/     scs)
Access: 2015-03-27 09:41:22.884094861 -0400
Modify: 2015-03-27 09:41:22.884094861 -0400
Change: 2015-03-27 09:41:41.292753637 -0400

And if we look at a particular mode portion, let's recall how the permissions are identified:

user   other       .- group
  |     |          |
 .-.   .-.         v
-rwxr--r-- 1 aviv scs    0 Mar 27 09:41 a
^   '-'       ^
|    |        '-- user/owner
|   group
|
'- Directory Bit

When an operation is performed on the file, such as reading, writing, or executing, the user taking the action is compared to the permission. If the right permissions are set, and the user matches those permissions, the action can be taken. For example, a user that is not aviv may still read the file if they are in group scs. More, even a user who meets neither criteria, the owner or group of the file, can still read the file because the other read permission is set.

Permissions of files can be changed using three commands:

• chmod : change the permissions string of the file which can only be done by the owner of the file (or super user).
• chgrp : change the group of the file which can only be done by the owner of the file (or super user)
• chown : change the owner of the file which can only be done by the super user.

The super user for unix systems is referred as root. It has full privileges and can do whatever it wants. Creating multiple levels of permissions by dividing users from one privilege to another is a key security concept. A key question is how does this occur? To understand this process, we have to start with when the user logs in.

The log procedure is not a huge focus of this lesson; however, what happens after login is incredibly relevant. Recall from the lectures on the tty that when a user "calls" a tty the program getty will execute login. Following the diagram:

 runs as root                      
.......................................
:  .-------.                          :
:  | getty |                          :
:  '-------'                          :
:      |                              : 
:    exec() <-------.                 :
:      |            |                 :
: (1)  v            | (failed)        :
:  .--------.       |     ............:
:  | login  | ------'     :    
:  '--------'             :                    runs as the user
:      | (success)        :   ..................................
:      |      ............:   :                                :
:      |      :   ............: .-------. (3)                  :
:     fork() -:---:- exec() --> | shell |                      :
:.............: ^ :             '-------'                      :
 (2)            | :                  |                  .----. :
  changes ______| :               fork() --- exec() --> | ls | :
    user          :                                     '----' :
                  :............................................:

At (1), the log procedure is going to authentic a user by asking for a password. While it would seem logical for passwords to be stored in /etc/passwd, it isn't. The reason /etc/passwd is named such is that it used to store password; however, that is no longer the case. Now passwords are stored are in the file /etc/shadow which is carefully protected, and passwords are not stored in plain text in /etc/shadow but rather stored using secure hashes.

Of more interest to this lesson is what happens if the user successfully logs into the system. The log in procedure needs to run in a privileged state so that passwords can be checked from /etc/shadow. Only the root user has access to read/write the file, but we do not want it to be the case that when the user's shell starts up he/she gets the same permissions as the root user. To prevent that, there is a deescalation of privilege level by setting the effective user of the shell program to the user the that just logged onto the system – occurring at step (2). By the time the shell executes commands, the user is running — occurring at step (3).

There are two basic system calls for retrieving useer and group information for an execution program.

• uid_t getuid(void) : Returns the real user id of the calling process.
• gid_t getgid(void) : Returns the real group id of the calling process.

Let's look at an example program.

#include <unistd.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int main(int argc, char * argv[]){

  uid_t uid;
  gid_t gid;

  uid = getuid();

  gid = getgid();

  printf("uid=%d gid=%d\n", uid, gid);

}

When executing, my user id and group id is printed to the terminal:

m179998@saddleback: git $ ~aviv/lec-23-demo/get_uidgid 
uid=179998 gid=15000

These values are mine. If you were to run the same program, you would get a different value. For example, I have a test student account m17998 and if I run this program as that user:

m159998@saddleback: git $ ~aviv/lec-23-demo/get_uidgid 
uid=35013 gid=15000
m159998@saddleback: git $ ls -l ~aviv/lec-23-demo/get_uidgid 
-rwxr-x--x 1 aviv scs 8622 Mar 30 10:40 /home/scs/aviv/lec-23-demo/get_uidgid

Even though the program is owned by the user aviv, the execution of the program as the process takes on the permissions of the user that runs the program, which is m179998 in this demo. However, this could be changed.

There is also an obvious need to be able to set the user/group privileges of a running program. For example, consider the submission system we have been using all semester. You all run a program in my home directory:

~aviv/bin/ic221-submit

This program, run by you, has your user and group permissions, but it is able to take your submission and copy/save those submissions to my home directory, with my permissions at a location where you do not have access to write. How is that possible?

If you could somehow change the user/group setting of the running program to my user/group priviledge, then you could write to my home directory. This is essentially how the submission system works.

To have a program run with a different user's capabilities requires additional permissions on the program beyond just that the user can execute the program. These permissions are called the set-bit and if we look at the man page for chmod, the set-bit is composed of three permission bits we previously ignored:

A numeric mode is from one to four octal digits (0-7), derived by
adding up the bits with values 4, 2, and 1.  Omitted digits are
assumed to be leading zeros.  *The first digit selects the set user ID
(4) and set group ID (2) and restricted deletion or sticky (1)
attributes.*  The second digit selects permissions for the user who
owns the file: read (4), write (2), and execute (1); the third selects
permissions for other users in the file's group, with the same values;
and the fourth for other users not in the file's group, with the same
values.

That is, we previously assumed a permission string contained 3 octal digits, but really there are 4 octal digits. The missing octal digit is that for the set-bits. There are three possible set-bit settings and they are combined in the same way as other permissions:

• 4 or s+u : set-user-id : sets the program's effective user id to the owner of the program
• 2 or s+g: set-group-id : sets the program's effective group id to the group of the program
• 1 or t: the sticky bit : used to denote the memory loading of a program or directory

These bits are used in much the same way as the other permission modes. For example, we can change the permission of our get_uidgid program from before like so:

chmod 6751 get_uidgid

And we can interpet the octals like so:

set      group
bits user |  other
  |   |   |   |
  V   V   V   V
 110 111 101 001
  6   7   5   1

When we look at the ls -l output of the program, the permission string reflects these settings with an "s" in the execute part of the string for user and group.

aviv@saddleback: lec-23-demo $ ls -l get_uidgid
-rwsr-s--x 1 aviv scs 8778 Mar 30 16:45 get_uidgid

With the set-bits, when the program runs, the capabilities of the program are effectively that of the owner and group of the program. However, the real user id and real group id remain that of the user who ran the program. This brings up the concept of effective vs. real identifiers:

• real user id (or group id) : the identifier of the actual user who executed a program
• effective user id (or group id) : the idenifier for the capabilities or permissions settings of an executing program.

The system calls getuid() and getgid() return the real user and group identifiers, but we can also retrieve the effective user and group identifiers:

• uid_t geteuid(void) : return the effective user identifier for the calling process
• gid_t getegid(void) : return the effective group identifer for the calling process

We now have enough to test set-bit programs using a the following program that prints both the real and effective user/group identities.

#include <unistd.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int main(int argc, char * argv[]){

  uid_t uid,euid;
  gid_t gid,egid;

  uid = getuid();
  gid = getgid();
  printf(" uid=%d  gid=%d\n",  uid,  gid);

  euid = geteuid();
  egid = getegid();
  printf("euid=%d egid=%d\n", euid, egid);
  

}

As the owner of the file, after compilation, the permissions can be set to add set-user-id:

aviv@saddleback: lec-23-demo $ make get_euidegid
cc     get_euidegid.c   -o get_euidegid
aviv@saddleback: lec-23-demo $ chmod u+s get_euidegid
aviv@saddleback: lec-23-demo $ ls -l get_euidegid
-rwsr-x--x 1 aviv scs 8730 Mar 31 08:31 get_euidegid

Now as the m179998 user, the program can be run, and we see that the effective user id of the program is aviv's id:

m179998@saddleback: ~ $ ~aviv/lec-23-demo/get_euidegid 
 uid=179998  gid=15000
euid=35001 egid=15000
m179998@saddleback: ~ $ id
uid=179998(m179998) gid=15000(mids) groups=15000(mids),15001(ic221)
m179998@saddleback: ~ $ id aviv
uid=35001(aviv) gid=10120(scs) groups=27(sudo),15000(mids),10120(scs),15001(ic221)

Continuing the example, we can see the other set-bit settings give different effective user/group settings:

aviv@saddleback: lec-23-demo $ chmod g+s get_euidegid
aviv@saddleback: lec-23-demo $ ls -l get_euidegid
-rwsr-s--x 1 aviv scs 8730 Mar 31 08:31 get_euidegid

m179998@saddleback: ~ $ ~aviv/lec-23-demo/get_euidegid 
 uid=179998  gid=15000
euid=35001 egid=10120

aviv@saddleback: lec-23-demo $ ls -l get_euidegid
-rwxr-s--x 1 aviv scs 8730 Mar 31 08:31 get_euidegid

m179998@saddleback: ~ $ ~aviv/lec-23-demo/get_euidegid 
 uid=179998  gid=15000
euid=179998 egid=10120

And just to show how the effective user ID plays a role, let's consider what happens when we have set-group-id program that opens a file:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
int main(int argc, char * argv[]){

  int i,fd;

  for(i=0;i<argc;i++){

    //create an empty file
    if( (fd = open(argv[i],O_CREAT,0666) > 0) ){
      close(fd);
    }else{
      perror("open");
    }
  }

  return 0;
}

When we compile we can set this program to set-group-id:

aviv@saddleback: lec-23-demo $ make create_file
cc     create_file.c   -o create_file
aviv@saddleback: lec-23-demo $ chmod g+s create_file
aviv@saddleback: lec-23-demo $ ls -l create_file
-rwxr-s--x 1 aviv scs 8620 Mar 31 08:41 create_file

Now, let's create a file as the m179998 user:

m179998@saddleback: ~ $ ~aviv/lec-23-demo/create_file a b c 
m179998@saddleback: ~ $ ls -l a b c
-rw-r----- 1 m179998 scs 0 Mar 31 08:42 a
-rw-r----- 1 m179998 scs 0 Mar 31 08:42 b
-rw-r----- 1 m179998 scs 0 Mar 31 08:42 c

Notice that the group of the file is scs not mids, which is the default group.

However, see what happens if we make this program set-user-id instead:

aviv@saddleback: lec-23-demo $ chmod g-s create_file
aviv@saddleback: lec-23-demo $ chmod u+s create_file
aviv@saddleback: lec-23-demo $ ls -l create_file
-rwsr-x--x 1 aviv scs 8620 Mar 31 08:41 create_file

m179998@saddleback: ~ $ rm -f a b c
m179998@saddleback: ~ $ ~aviv/lec-23-demo/create_file a b c 
open: Permission denied
open: Permission denied
open: Permission denied
m179998@saddleback: ~ $ ls -l a b c
ls: cannot access a: No such file or directory
ls: cannot access b: No such file or directory
ls: cannot access c: No such file or directory

The operation is not permitted, and this is because the user aviv does not have the permission to write to the directory. But, what if we wanted to create a file in the director that is owned by aviv in a directory that the real user has permission to write to? What we need is a way to programmatically change the capabilities.

The set-bits automatically start a program with the effective user or group id set; however, there are times when we might want to downgrade priviledge or change permission dynamically. There are two system calls to change user/group settings of an executing process:

• setuid(uid_t uid) : change the effective user id of a process to uid
• setgid(gid_t gid) : change the effective group id of a proces to gid

The requirements of setuid() (for all users other than root) is that the effective user id can be changed to the real user id of the program or to an effective user id as described in the set-bits. The root user, however, can downgrade to any user id and upgrade back to the root user. For setgid() the user can chance the group id to any group the user belongs to or as allowed by the set-group-id bit.

Now we can look at a program that downgrades and upgrades a program dynamically:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>

int main(){

  uid_t uid,euid;
  gid_t gid,egid;

  uid_t saved_euid;

  uid = getuid();
  gid = getgid();
  printf(" uid=%d  gid=%d\n",  uid,  gid);

  euid = geteuid();
  egid = getegid();
  printf("euid=%d egid=%d\n", euid, egid);


  saved_euid=euid;
  setuid(uid);

  printf("---- setuid(%d) ----\n",uid);

  uid = getuid();
  gid = getgid();
  printf(" uid=%d  gid=%d\n",  uid,  gid);

  euid = geteuid();
  egid = getegid();
  printf("euid=%d egid=%d\n", euid, egid);


  setuid(saved_euid);

  printf("---- setuid(%d) ----\n",saved_euid);
  uid = getuid();
  gid = getgid();
  printf(" uid=%d  gid=%d\n",  uid,  gid);

  euid = geteuid();
  egid = getegid();
  printf("euid=%d egid=%d\n", euid, egid);

}

If we look at the output with the program set-user-id ran by m179998:

m179998@saddleback: ~ $ ~aviv/lec-23-demo/setuid 
 uid=179998  gid=15000
euid=35001 egid=15000
---- setuid(179998) ----
 uid=179998  gid=15000
euid=179998 egid=15000
---- setuid(35001) ----
 uid=179998  gid=15000
euid=35001 egid=15000

Who has permission to run sudo commands? This is important because on many modern unix systems, like ubuntu, there is no default root password. Instead certain users are deemed to be sudoers or privileged users. These are set in a special configuraiton file called the /etc/sudoers.

aviv@saddleback: lec-23-demo $ cat /etc/sudoers
cat: /etc/sudoers: Permission denied
aviv@saddleback: lec-23-demo $ sudo cat /etc/sudo
sudoers    sudoers.d/ 
aviv@saddleback: lec-23-demo $ sudo cat /etc/sudoers
#
# This file MUST be edited with the 'visudo' command as root.
#
# Please consider adding local content in /etc/sudoers.d/ instead of
# directly modifying this file.
#
# See the man page for details on how to write a sudoers file.
#
Defaults	env_reset
Defaults	mail_badpass
Defaults	secure_path="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin"

# Host alias specification

# User alias specification

# Cmnd alias specification

# User privilege specification
root	ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

# Members of the admin group may gain root privileges
%admin ALL=(ALL) ALL

# Allow members of group sudo to execute any command
%sudo	ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

# See sudoers(5) for more information on "#include" directives:

#includedir /etc/sudoers.d

Notice that only root has access to read this file, and since I am a sudoer on saddleback I can get access to it. If you look carefully, you can perform a basic parse of the settings. The root user has full sudo permissions, and other sudoer's are determine based on group membership. Users in the sudo or admin group may run commands as root, and I am a member of the sudo group:

aviv@saddleback: lec-23-demo $ id
uid=35001(aviv) gid=10120(scs) groups=10120(scs),27(sudo),15000(mids),15001(ic221)

However, on a lab machine, I do not have such group settings:

aviv@mich302csd01u: ~ $ id
uid=35001(aviv) gid=10120(scs) groups=10120(scs),15000(mids)