OMG. -froot bug resurfaced. https://seclists.org/oss-sec/2026/q1/89

I see the headlines, "10 years old bug".

My friends, this bug is older. Much older. Not this particular instance, but it is a classical mistake to make. It's a command line injection when calling the login executable.

Some people point to CVE-2007-0882. Solaris had that, almost 20 years ago.

But it's even older than that. It's so old it predates the CVE system. I don't remember exact dates, but we popped Linux and AIX boxes with that, mid 90s.

But it is *even older* than that. Have a look at System V R4, ©1990, getty calling login with unsanitized input:

https://github.com/calmsacibis995/svr4-src/blob/7dabeda6fc10bd1bbd1a84d502f05642b1bf0c9e/cmd/getty/getty.c#L526

But how deep does the rabbit hole go? When was this bug introduced?

Getty called login with user input since the dawn of time (UNIX V2, 1972):

https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V2/cmd/getty.s

But this predates command line arguments in login:

https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V2/cmd/login.s

So, when did this particular command line feature of login appear?

In the BSD universe, -f was introduced with POSIX compatibilitiy in 4.3BSD-Reno:

https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=4.3BSD-Reno/src/usr.bin/login/login.c

But someone paid attention and filtered out user names starting with - in getty:

https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=4.3BSD-Reno/src/libexec/getty/main.c

RCS timestamp says 6/29/1990, so same age as SysV R4.

The original 4.3BSD (1986) doesn't filter the user name:

https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=4.3BSD/usr/src/etc/getty/main.c

And it does have a -r option in login:

https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=4.3BSD/usr/src/bin/login.c

Exploitable? No idea, argv processing might be a problem. I'll find out another day.

In conclusion: bug existed since 1990, it's so easy to make when implementing POSIX that it keeps resurfacing, and at least one person in Berkeley knew since day 0.

it saw another windows aero theme for kde. that's cute but it thinks gnome also deserves some love too

anyways here's a gnome desktop composited by the real aero dwm.exe from win7