Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by justincormack 4007 days ago
The environment of a process is only available to root or the same uid.
1 comments

    vagrant@monitor:/proc$ sudo -u nginx cat 1779/environ
UPSTART_INSTANCE=runlevel=2UPSTART_JOB=rcTERM=linuxPATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/binRUNLEVEL=2PREVLEVEL=NUPSTART_EVENTS=runlevelPWD=/previous=N

It's not uncommon to allow users to sudo up to particular system users for commands, nor it is uncommon for compromised programs to give the attacker a shell as the user of the compromised program.

Anything owned by that user is vulnerable. A common problem which is typically resolved by reading a config file while root and downgrading to a lower privilege user. For example, you wouldn't want anyone who could become the nginx user to get the SSL key, or the password to your S3 bucket, or...

You do not give the nginx user sudo ability, and any user who has sudo is root, and should be treated as such.