Electron wanted to use the CHFN bug because, if the attack was
successful, Phoenix would be able to make a root account for himself
on Spaf's machine. That would be the ultimate slap in the face to a
high-profile computer security guru.
But things weren't going well for Phoenix. The frustrated Australian
hacker kept telling Electron that the bug should work, but it
wouldn't, and he couldn't figure out why. The problem, Electron
finally concluded, was that Spaf's machine was a Sequent. The CHFN bug
depended on a particular Unix password file structure, but Sequents
used a different structure. It didn't help that Phoenix didn't know
that much about Sequents--they were one of Gandalf's specialties.
After a few exasperating hours struggling to make the CHFN bug work,
Phoenix gave up and turned to another security flaw suggested by
Electron: the FTP bug. Phoenix ran through the bug in his mind.
Normally, someone used FTP, or file transfer protocol, to transfer
files over a network, such as the Internet, from one computer to
another. FTPing to another machine was a bit like telnetting, but the
user didn't need a password to login and the commands he could execute
once in the other computer were usually very limited.
Pages:
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356